There was a party in Brixton on Friday night. Scores of residents, drinks in hand and with a DJ booming, congregated outside Max Snack Bar to celebrate the withdrawal of the plan for Taylor Tower, Hondo Enterprises’ controversial luxury office block — named after owner Taylor McWilliams — once destined to climb 20 storeys in Pope’s Road.
Locals in one of London’s famous neighbourhoods had been challenging the development since 2020. Fight The Tower, a collective of around 50 residents, including traders and restaurateurs, began campaigning to protect Brixton’s historic market, as well as its many independent bars and restaurants. It was, to some degree, a protest against bricks and mortar but more importantly, the group explained, it was about preserving Brixton’s character.
“We’re not against development and progress [in Brixton],” says Danai Nardi, who co-founded the movement, “but we want to see proper support of local restaurants, bars and businesses. Our issue is that Hondo demonstrated it has no clue about local people, their talent, skills, spaces. We don’t need a Texan millionaire [McWilliams] to build such a huge office building.”
Fight The Tower members received notice of the news just before 9pm on Monday last week. “We were all so happy, excited, shocked. We won after all this work — it was a David versus Goliath battle,” says Nardi. “We won with no money, no lawyers and no spin doctors.”
Instead, their battle had been one of signs, pamphlets, pickets and social media. It was a collective effort — group members handing out flyers on the streets, lobbying local authorities, and calling on others for help. The likes of the Victorian Society, the Brixton Society, and Dulwich and West Norwood MP Helen Hayes all backed the position.
Hayes called the withdrawal “very welcome” and added: “This proposal was never good enough for Brixton. It was twice as tall as any other building in the surrounding area and would have overshadowed local independent businesses.”
Brixton deserves better than a scheme which results in such clear harm to its special character
Many in Brixton — and beyond — felt such a tower would damage its heritage. It is a pocket of London known for being low and mid-rise at most, where small but buzzing restaurants are tucked away under railway arches; they line its winding streets and bustle inside the historic Brixton Market, a festoon-lit eating emporium that, if frequented on the right Friday night, exudes a festival-like atmosphere. Brixton has avoided the sterility imposed on so much of London.
Historic England had made this point with fervour. Responding to the news, a spokeswoman told the Standard: “We’re pleased to see the withdrawal of this misguided application. We believe the original proposal for the 20-storey Hondo tower would have had a profoundly negative impact on Brixton’s low-rise townscape.“We hope that the developer considers their next steps carefully and listens to the strong messages of the local campaign group, who have consistently opposed the development. Brixton deserves better than a scheme which results in such clear harm to its special character.”
The Standard attempted to contact Hondo on multiple occasions but received no reply. A spokeswoman for the property consultancy firm DP9, based in St James’s and which worked with Hondo on the planning of the tower, said this paper’s request for comment had been sent on to the relevant director. No response followed.
Without the tower, Brixton lives on. But nobody is naive to think it isn’t entirely immune to change. Jamaican-born Etta Burrell, part of the Windrush Generation and who has run Etta’s Seafood in the market for 14 years, said: “The tower, it’s not necessary. Sometimes it feels like [the locals] have been forgotten. People come to the market now asking if I’m new. I say, ‘No hun, you’re new.’”
Burrell adds that outside interest is not always negative and Brixton has not been without its challenges. But the restaurateur says she doesn’t want SW9 to become like so many other parts of London which, perhaps, have lost their charm.
“Everyone and everywhere changes. But why are people putting up big towers? Brixton mustn’t forget what it is and what it’s about. It’s fish and music.”
So this is the story of how Brixton locals saw off the designs of a Texan millionaire. Others, no doubt, are coming — London is too dynamic a city to believe otherwise. But make no mistake, with communities like this, the spirit that makes places like Brixton so attractive to the world will not be left behind.
