Image courtesy of Stockwool Architects
China’s largest developer, Country Garden, is to make its first venture into the London property market after buying an £80m site in east London.
Ailsa Wharf, in the Poplar district of Tower Hamlets, will be turned into 13 apartment blocks comprising 785 homes and 2,000 sq m of commercial space. Altogether, the project is estimated to have a development value of around £284m.
Planning permission for the scheme, designed by the local firm of Stockwool Architects, was applied for in October 2016 and given consent this year.
Stockwool describes its plan as the regeneration of one of the last remaining brownfield sites in Tower Hamlets: a “heavily contaminated 2.5ha tract of next to the River Lea which has laid unused for many years”.
Its design seeks to change perception of the site from “post-industrial wasteland” to new urban quarter. The site has complex land ownership issues that have held back other attempts to bring it forward since 2003.
A Country Garden executive told The South China Morning Post that building work was likely to start in the summer, with the first properties due to be completed in 2021.
The move comes despite a change of policy by China’s Communist Party, which is placing tighter restrictions on foreign investment.
The SCMP’s source said the purchase in London was financed by non-domestic lenders, so it complied with state policies.
