“On a day like this, it’s glorious,” says Jeremy Rees, surveying the sun-kissed Royal Docks from a footbridge above the water.
To his left is ExCeL, the giant exhibition space and conference centre of which he is chief executive. Ahead of him, to the east, is City Airport, with a plane coming into land on its miniature runway as we speak.
Behind him is the London’s new-ish City Hall, opened by Sadiq Khan two years ago to much consternation. Overhanging the Mayor’s second-floor office is the cable car that links the Royal Docks with North Greenwich and the O2 arena.
And to his right is a remarkable landmark: Millennium Mills, a derelict former flour mill, upon which the dreams of many hang. It sits at the heart of a hugely ambitious regeneration project that could yet turn this former industrial area into the capital’s next King’s Cross.
The aim is for 36,000 new homes and 55,000 new jobs to be created over the next 20 years. The Royal Victoria and the Royal Albert docks — divided by the Connaught road bridge — will form the centrepiece. To the south lies the Thames and the Thames Barrier.
“There’s a huge amount going on here but it can be a little bit hidden away,” admits Tom Copley, Mr Khan’s deputy mayor for housing.
How true. Visitors to City Hall — and those who work there — may occasionally enjoy a coffee at Perky Blenders or a post-work drink on the Good Hotel’s sun-deck. But otherwise the best on offer can be a meal deal from Tesco Express or a baked potato from the City Hall café; not exactly the image of a thriving city that any mayor would wish to portray.
It’s a far contrast to the tourist buzz that grew around the former City Hall, boosted by Bermondsey Street, Borough Market and the transformed London Bridge train station all becoming destinations in their own right.
The arrival of the Elizabeth line has been a game changer — Oxford Street is now only 15 minutes away
Mr Rees, though, is optimistic. ExCeL, which hosted the G20 summit of world leaders in 2009, including President Obama, six Olympic events in 2012 and a Nightingale hospital during the pandemic, is finally coming of age.
The arrival of the Elizabeth line had been a “game changer” and had “transformed ExCeL’s business model, by making people feel very differently about the location”, he said. Oxford Street is now only 15 minutes away.
The next challenge is to get ExCeL delegates to hang around and spend their money locally rather than catching the Lizzie line straight back into town. The concept is known as “stickiness”.
“Previously, people have come here, conducted their business and gone to the West End,” Mr Rees said. “I would love it if people felt they had a really good time here as well. Lots of the events we host are trade shows. But on the consumer side, like Comic Con [the comic book and video games convention], people are coming here to have a fantastic time. You need to make it more fun.”
ExCeL is expanding eastwards with a £230million extension and is halfway through adding brick “arches” to its riverfront aspect to create the “largest immersive events district in the UK”.
Mr Rees said: “We are working with some really big organisations in the sport, music and entertainment fields, such as Disney, to create immersive experiences.” The most recent is the immersive Friends Experience (aka The One in Excel London) which has just opened, and is likely to be a huge draw to the area.
Key to the redevelopment of the Royal Docks is the fact that the Greater London Authority owns 175 hectares of land, inherited in 2012 from a “bonfire of the quangos”. A new DLR station south of Canning Town, and a capacity upgrade of Pontoon Dock DLR station, are also in the pipeline.
Construction of a new step-free Silvertown bridge — alongside the existing high bridge, whose lifts “keep breaking down” — looks set to go ahead after Newham council recently approved a big cash injection.This will create a direct link for pedestrians and cyclists between Millennium Mills and the Elizabeth line and DLR station at Custom House, via ExCeL’s front door.
According to the Mayor’s Royal Docks Delivery Plan, 4,300 homes have been built or will be “underway” in the next five years, mostly at Royal Albert Wharf and at Silvertown. Three new primary schools and a health centre are planned. There is even talk of a “15-minute neighbourhood” at Beckton Riverside, at the far eastern end of the regeneration area, conspiracy theorists permitting.
Next summer the £2 billion Silvertown road tunnel will open. Supporters say this will improve cross-river road links (though drivers will have to pay a toll for the privilege), but critics predict a Blackwall Tunnel-style roar of traffic yards from City Hall, and fumes to match. Millennium Mills was once earmarked by Ken Livingstone as the home of the London Aquarium. Now owned by Lendlease and Starwood Capital, the vision is for a commercial conversion akin to the Granary building at King’s Cross — home to Dishoom and Caravan — or the Tea Building in Shoreditch, which is home to Shoreditch House and Pizza East.
Ed Mayes, Lendlease development director for Silvertown, is targeting “creatives” as prospective tenants. “We could put a swimming pool on the roof if the right tenant came along,” he said. “The idea is workspace, F&B [food and beverage] on the roof, ground floor publicly accessible, maybe market halls.”
But the priority is to first build about 3,000 homes between the mill and North Woolwich Road.
The mill’s future as a commercial rather than residential building has the advantage of safeguarding public access. But how long until it is transformed? “As soon as we get the appropriate tenants,” he said. “We have actively got interest... It may be that we start it in the next couple of years.” The plans aim to maximise the lure of the “prime waterfront” — all 12 miles of it. Only a fraction is accessible at present.
A lido next to City Hall has been mooted. That part of the Royal Victoria dock is already used for water sports — with Mr Copley among those to have dived in.
Some 65,000 people already live in the wider area. Between the Lendlease site and the Thames is Ballymore’s Royal Wharf development.
It has grown from 3,300 to 4,000 homes, with of which about 200 units remain available. Three-bed apartments can cost up to £1.1 million — though for that price you can expect a “picture window” over the Thames and the Thames Clipper boat to the O2 and central London.
But funding and completing developments of this scale is much harder than a decade ago, warned Roger Black, creative director of Ballymore.
“Delivering that many homes in 2024 is more difficult — construction inflation, land tax, the Building Safety Act,” he said. “It’s a very difficult thing to build communities of this scale that quickly today.”
For Mr Copley, the Royal Docks remain an “enormous opportunity”. “What this is all about is partnership,” he said. “We are very fortunate that City Hall, the GLA, owns the land here and we have affordable housing funding that we can invest in this area, in order to regenerate it. This is not something that the private sector is going to do by itself. It needs to have that partnership approach between public and private.”
