Boris Johnson gives the seal of approval to innovative King’s Cross construction project

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson at the Great Northern Hotel meeting one of the apprentices

A CONSTRUCTION project in King’s Cross has been praised for creating new employment opportunities and on-site training for local people.
The King’s Cross Central project, an 8 million sq ft development of office, shopping and leisure space, housing, new streets and historic building restoration, is an ambitious scheme aiming to generate over 26,000 jobs over the next 15 years.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson attended an event on site last week to sign a construction employment charter and meet with apprentices.
Mr Johnson said: “It will be the most fantastic project and deliver huge quantities of new affordable housing over the next 10 to 15 years, while generating 26,000 jobs in a pretty rough economic climate.
“The construction sector is not only vital to helping London through the current downturn, it will also play a major role in its future economic prosperity, delivering the critical infrastructure improvements that will ensure the capital remains competitive.
“I applaud these contractors who are working together to set new standards in the delivery of skills and training, as well as ensuring that local people are benefiting too from the many opportunities that are being created.”
Outline planning permission has been granted for the creation of an estimated 2,000 homes, 20 streets, 5 million sq ft of office space and 10 new major public spaces, and the University of the Arts London, including Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, will relocate to the site by 2011.
Historic buildings and structures will be refurbished, including the Grade II listed Great Northern Hotel which is set to re-open as a boutique hotel in time for the 2012 Olympic Games.
The project is the largest city centre regeneration scheme in Europe and is supported by the National Skills Academy, a partnership between employers, training providers and ConstructionSkills, the sector skills council for construction.
The Academy and the developers, King’s Cross Central Partnership, have set up a construction skills centre at the site, which will provide training, professional qualifications and employment opportunities to local people.
ConstructionSkills’ Director of Skills Strategy, Steve Geary, said: “The National Skills Academy for Construction project here will help ensure relevant, timely and top quality training is delivered for the lifetime of the project.
“We are working with the local authority, other government agencies and the Mayor’s office to make sure that we put programmes in place to allow access for local people to training and employment opportunities, and that’s a similar approach that’s been adopted in other major projects like the Olympics.”
The construction phase will ensure the local community benefits from job opportunities, with contractors encouraged to use local companies as suppliers and identify jobs that can be filled by suitably experienced local unemployed people.
Camden Council leader Keith Moffitt said: “Camden is leading the way in London for training and skilling-up the local workforce.
“The regeneration project at King’s Cross Central is already bringing a huge variety of benefits to the local area and will continue to do so over the lifetime of the project.”
Mr Johnson added: “I do congratulate Camden and the developers on their enterprising, they’ve shown a great deal of initiative and confidence in pushing this project forward at a time of uncertainty.”

Victorian rail gem is back on track for run-up to Olympics

The old and new meet with spectacular results inside the renovated Eastern Range building at King's Cross station.

IT’S full steam ahead at King’s Cross – with the unveiling of the new-look Eastern Range.
The transformation of the range – a Victorian building that had fallen out of service – is part of the Department of Transport and Network Rail’s £450m redevelopment of the station.
The refurbished building brings back 70,000 sq ft into use for up to 400 station staff.
It was officially opened last Tuesday by heritage minister MP Barbara Follett, along with representatives from English Heritage and Network Rail.
Speaking at the event last week, Mrs Follett said: “Congratulations on the superb job at the Eastern Range.
“You have appreciated we have a past, but also that we must look to the future.”
Conservation specialists and English Heritage have worked closely with Network Rail on the remodelling of the building.
They have taken care to retain and emphasise the historic features of the Victorian building while furnishing it with state-of-the-art office facilities.
Architects have also endeavoured to make the building environment-friendly, with loft insulation, secondary glazing and automatically responsive lighting and heating, which ensures that little or no energy is wasted.
Rainwater will also be recycled for use within the building through a rainwater harvesting tank.

Looking into the main train shed at King's Cross from inside the refurbished Eastern Range building

The new-look Eastern Range offers a glimpse of what the remodel of the station – designed by British architect Lewis Cubitt in 1852 – will look like on completion in time for the 2012 Olympics.
Network Rail’s director of infrastructure investment, Simon Kirby, said: “The Eastern Range epitomises everything we are trying to achieve as a company.
“It represents our commitment to deliver a twenty-first century railway, our commitment to heritage, and is a symbol of what passengers, customers and communities can rightly expect of a twenty-first century railway network.”
The original 1851 façade, the ticket hall and the main train shed roof will be restored in the Grade 1-listed station – one of only five stations in England to have such status – by demolishing the current single-storey extension to the station.
Network Rail will triple the size of the current concourse area by creating a new semi-circular western concourse with a curving glass and aluminium roof . A new additional platform will also be built.
The company will also spend more than £6m to create a new open-air piazza – larger than Leicester Square – at the front of the station.
Once work is completed, the station will incorporate transport links with international and domestic services from St Pancras and the London Underground.

Simon Kirby, Network Rail's director for infrastructure investment, MP Barbara Follett, heritage minister, and Paddy Pugh, English Heritage's regional director for London officially open the new-look Eastern Range

About 50 million passengers passing through each year – an increase of 10 million from this year.
The community is set to benefit too. Almost 400 jobs will be created as a result of this work, and the rail company has also given a further £1m to Camden Council to spend on improvements to the area, including £750,000 to improve the pedestrian environment along York Way.
Network Rail’s programme director Ian Fry said: “King’s Cross is being transformed into a world-class transport hub which can meet future demand and offer the best facilities for passengers.
“Crucially, we have carefully planned the way we carry out this work so that it causes no disruption to train services as we restore this impressive structure back to its former glory.”
The redevelopment of King’s Cross follows on from the extensive works on neighbouring St Pancras station. It is now the terminus for international Eurostar trains linking London to Paris, Brussels and the rest of the European high-speed rail network.
The £800 million restoration and extension of the station was largely hailed as a success, transforming engineer William Barlow’s Victorian creation.
The station houses London’s longest champagne bar – said to be inspired by New York Grand Central Station’s Oyster bar – with a five-star Mariott hotel and daily fresh farmers’ market soon to follow. It is expected that the revamp of King’s Cross will bear comparison to the new St Pancras building – matching the station for facilities and architectural finesse.

How King's Cross station will look with its 1851 facade restored

Network Rail is also spending £175,000 to provide 800 more spaces for bike parking in the King’s Cross Central site in time for the Olympics.
The new King’s Cross St Pancras Underground station will also play a key part in the games.
The Olympic Javelin shuttle service will whisk passengers from the central London station to the Olympic Park in Stratford in just seven minutes.
A spokesman for The Railway Heritage Trust said: “We are delighted that after at least two false dawns work is now underway with major redevelopment works at King’s Cross station.
“The restored and refurbished Eastern Range building is an excellent example of how a nineteenth century building can be adapted to meet twenty first century needs by carefully respecting the historic fabric whilst at the same time introducing modern design and facilities.
“The provision of a new western concourse to replace the somewhat ugly, and now inadequate, 1973 frontage, with its attendant creation of open space, will allow Lewis Cubitt’s fine uncluttered 1852 design to once again be shown off to best advantage in addition to greatly benefiting all those who will use the station in the future.”