Finsbury Park Station/City North Development

Peter Crumb

There seems to be a bit of a racket with council works on its housing. On Birnam Road the council houses had scaffolding up for months all for half a day's painting of window ledges that didn't need doing in the first place. I shudder to think of the cost.

HolbornFox

Mulalley / Kier = thieves.

And there is poshos at the council, I deal with them, they just are not at the point of contact.

marko

@Peter Crumb That chimes with what I've observed too - I suspect these projects are not tightly managed, so they just simply leave the scaffold up and eventually somebody will come and do the work.

Ali

It is probaly a fixed price contract

Jennymc99

Any more rumours on what shops are moving in?

miss annie

Standard station fare I imagine - M&S, maybe WHS, a couple of fast food/eating places and a coffee shop - another Costa would be my guess.

LukeG

saw this https://www.islingtongazette.co.uk/news/finsbury-park-bakery-set-to-open-new-branch-in-city-north-shops-1-5888355

Bakery

Soon

Boots?

joust

One of those Cornish pasty shops that cost a fortune?l

Fireddo

Hi guys. I am one of the people that will be moving in City North.

It is a long story, my now wife and I bought the place in 2014 when it seemed like it would have been completed in 2016/17. It’s now 5 years later and we all know how it went! We are sorry about the disruption the long delays caused and feel a bit of guilt, but probably nobody wanted the works to be completed sooner more than us. We have been renting for a lot longer than we originally thought and we are not looking forward to moving house with a toddler!

But anyway, I thought I’d share some information about the shops since Jenny asked.
Disclaimer: none of these are confirmed. They were in advanced negotiation a little while back.

There was indeed a Costa, good guess! The other 3 shops that were mentioned when we asked were all food: Tongkotsu, Honest Burger and Wing Stop.

Hope this helps!

HolbornFox

Is there going to be a Gym Box?

Fireddo

Gymbox, M&S and Cineworld have all been confirmed long time ago.

LukeG

@Fireddo! don't feel guilty about the disruption and delays, it's not your fault in any way. Generally big construction projects don't go to plan, it would just be great if project managers estimated works correctly

joust

Hey fireddo.
Are you renting in the area? Or will you be moving here for the first time?

HolbornFox

Gym box gyms are actually really good, despite the colour schemes resembling the old Rhubarb and Custard cartoons.

Lord knows how that delay would work with a mortgage offer.

Fireddo

Hi @joust, we have been in Highbury for 7 years now. Whilst we won’t be completely new to the area we are looking forward to exploring more!

Arkady

The station sign was going up this morning.

Sutent

How exciting. Did you get a photo?

Arkady

No. But word is it will open a week earlier than reported- first week of December.

Fireddo

Quick update: it looks like Caffe' Nero is replacing Costa. Also according to a brochure I received, the commercial space would be launching in "Spring 2020".

Here's a picture of where the shops would be. There are at least another 5 fairly large units unassigned. https://imgur.com/a/7BpRYKl

Arkady

Thanks Fireddo. I'd love to see a higher resolution scan of that whole brochure.

Fireddo

Hey Arkady, I think imgur reduces the quality of picture on mobile, have you tried opening it on a laptop? It should look much better.

The rest of the brochure is mostly direct at potential investors. There are a lot of stars around the demographics of people living in the area, the residential market trends, some very optimistic travel time to a number of locations (48 minutes to Heathrow...) etc.

If you’re close to the development maybe pop into the showroom they opened on Goodwin street (next to closed tube entrance) and you can get a bag with a few things including the brochure about the area. If not I can surely upload some pictures.

lazyatom

I popped in to the showroom today, but didn’t pick up a bag. The guy at the desk said he thought the tube entrance wasn’t going to open until mid-January now, but I hope he’s wrong. Anyway, it was quite interesting to look around the model of the development they have.

Arkady

In Oak N4 they've been told that the tube entrance will open in the first week or so of December.

joust

Will it connect up to the train bit as well as the tube?

joust

Or is it quick to walk round

LukeG

On a more general note, does anyone know if the Tube Station itself be getting a makeover too?

Arkady

Yeah it will link to the mezzanine level that the train platform stairs all come off.

I've not seen any plans for another refurb. It's an incredibly difficult station to clean up because of all the water ingress issues. One day they should do a London Bridge on it, but you'd need to be able to close the East Coast mainline tracks to do that, and the disruption would be immense.

gardener-joe

Will anything be happening at the Wells Terrace bus station, i.e, to the:
- old ticket hall, entracne, and offices above
- Transport Police buidling
- car wash, fruit seller and kebab joint
- bus station infrastrcuture.
Anything?

grenners

Bring back Mango man? Get yer Mangos! Big juicy Mangos!