Locals claim Hondo boss Taylor McWilliams is turning Brixton ‘into Canary Wharf’ as plans for his controversial office tower are on brink of approval.
An embattled Taylor McWilliams is back with his next hedge-fund backed project for Brixton: A 20-storey office block over Electric Avenue.
Texan socialite and DJ Taylor McWilliams has resubmitted plans for the controversial tower after facing a tide of community objections over the initial plans, including from MP Helen Hayes and Historic England.
A decision on the tower is now impending, with community groups bracing themselves for the final two weeks of opposition before a decision on 3rd November.
McWilliams and his company Hondo were made locally notorious earlier this year after a viral campaign to save grocery shop Nour was successful, thwarting his attempts to evict the family-run shop as part of plans to increase the profitability of Brixton Market, which he also owns.
Now campaigners are up against a far more profitable venture for Hondo: a 20-storey tower of private offices that will overshadow iconic Electric Avenue, and which campaigners say will ‘supercharge’ the gentrification already seen in the area, which is said to harm local, Black-run businesses, and exclude the community from the profits of an area they themselves made popular.
Less than 1% of the floorspace in the tower is earmarked for community use.
One Lambeth artist and resident of 30 years said of the plans:
“This is about money, nothing else. This’ll displace people and families who’ve lived in Brixton for generations. It’s a slippery slope.
First, the monstrosity is built. Yeah, locals may gain a few years employment. But once it’s built, then what?
The corporations move in with their people, the local community don’t gain employment in these corporations.
The new influx of office workers want to live locally – they start buying up even more properties. The council owned land is sold to more and more developers.
Gradually Brixton turns into something that resembles Kings Cross, Shoreditch, Camden, or even worse, Canary Wharf.
“This is forced gentrification and social cleansing. We’ve been shook by the Windrush Scandal, and now this. We are constantly used. It’s painful to watch. You can see how Hondo is buying everyone.
We are poor, and need funds. So, corporations get us by dangling the financial carrot in front of us.
Hondo has managed to buy the silence of so many by offering them space in the building, employment in the market, or mates rates for their market outlets.
Why are so many black people in their leaflets? Why use the biggest UK black architect? Why all these businesses led by black people? Cos, that’s how you silence us.
It’s colonisation, divide and rule. These are tactics that have been used on us for centuries. It’s sinister.”
Award-winning coach and Afewee football academy co-founder Steadman Scott said:
We don’t need any 20-storey office block in our community. What we need is investment in our young people.
In mitigation for its overshadowing presence and the massive influx of commuter footfall to Brixton, Hondo offer a set of public toilets, and a ‘rooftop restaurant’.
At the time of writing, the objections on the planning application stand at over 1000; the number of votes in support: 12. A petition launched against the tower has already gained over 5500 signatures.
Despite this, Lambeth Planning Committee have said they are “minded to approve” the tower.
Despite a sense that so much of Brixton’s heritage has already been lost to rampant gentrification, the Hondo Tower is widely seen as the final nail in the coffin for Brixton’s defence against the corporate, hedge-fund backed takeover of so much of London.
Lambeth will make a decision on the 3rd November.
[This article by the Save Nour campaign group]
Join the discussion
Join in with the forum discussions on the Brixton forum:
- Hondo’s huge plans for Pope’s Road, Brixton (over 350 posts)
- The Brixton Project (formerly Brixton Design Trail) and Hondo
- Brixton Village, Market Row, Pope’s Road, Lost In Brixton and Hondo Enterprises’ Brixton empire (over 380 posts)
Have your say about the development
- Make an objection on Lambeth’s planning site
- Fill in an online objection postcard
- Petition: Stop Hondo Enterprises building a 20-storey tower in the central Brixton heritage area
- How to object to a planning application – an essential guide to getting your voice heard
- Follow @NoHondoTower on Twitter
Background
- Fight The Tower: over 1,000 planning objections and 5,000 signatures registered against Hondo’s proposed 20-storey tower in central Brixton
- Grade 2 listed Brixton Recreation Centre ignored in planning assessment for proposed 20-storey tower in central Brixton
- Brixton’s Hondo Enormo-Tower: where a structural column becomes ‘an interactive fireplace’ and an ‘art piece’
- Hondo tweak the design of their Brixton 20-storey Enormo-Tower with groovy happenings and foliage galore
- Hondo start soliciting signatures in the street to support their unpopular Brixton Enormo-Tower
- Lambeth Planning Committee votes 5-2 in favour of deferring Hondo Enormo-Tower application for Pope’s Road in Brixton
- Brixton MP Helen Hayes urges Lambeth Planning to reject the proposed Hondo Enormo-Tower
- Historic England slam Hondo Enormo-Tower’s ‘significant harmful visual impact’ on Brixton ahead of Lambeth Planning meeting
- Lambeth Officers recommend approval for controversial Hondo Enormo-Tower along Pope’s Road ahead of Planning Applications Committee
Who’s behind the development?
The planning application says that the scheme “is a joint venture by AG Hondo Pope’s Road BV who have an agreement to purchase the site, currently occupied by Sports Direct and Flannels.”
It goes on to claim that Hondo is part of a property development company who have a “longstanding presence in the borough having purchased Market Row and Brixton Village” in, err, “March 2018.”
Housekeeping DJ and socialite Taylor McWilliams – the sole director of Hondo Enterprises who own Brixton Village and Market Row – is also a director of AG Hondo Pope’s Road BV, along with Robert Tieskens, a director of the Netherlands arm of the monster New York based investment company, Angelo Gordon.
Read more
- Brixton for sale: who are Hondo Enterprises, owners of Brixton Village, Market Row, Club 414 and more?
- Privilege, wealth and power: Brixton landlord Taylor McWilliams and his Housekeeping DJ Collective
- Brixton anti-gentrification crowdfunder raises over £10,000 in one day, as locals decry landlords Taylor McWilliams and Hondo