In October 2012, Haringey Council leader Claire Kober alerted developers and housing associations to over 25 ‘key development opportunity sites’ across the north London borough of Haringey, writes Paul Coleman.

   Some ‘disposal’ sites were located in Tottenham, an area Haringey Council wanted to regenerate. The area was hit by the August 2011 riots after suffering for several decades from high unemployment, poverty, poor housing and police-black community tensions.

   Notable development sites in Haringey’s ‘investment pack’ included Alexandra Palace - a Grade II-listed iconic north London landmark - St Ann’s Hospital, Haringey Heartlands where the Council seeks 1,000 new homes, and Haringey’s own Civic Centre.

   Invited developers inside Tottenham Hotspur Football Club’s plush Bill Nicholson Suite also received a copy of the Council’s A Plan for Tottenham that promised ‘up to 10,000 new high quality homes and over 5,000 new jobs’ for Tottenham by 2025.

New Spurs stadium

Kober said Spurs’ £400 million new 56,000-seater stadium would provide Tottenham with 300 new homes and 800 ‘match day’ jobs. “We were prepared to reduce Section 106 terms to get the Spurs scheme moving,” said Kober, referring chiefly to the absence of an agreement to provide ‘affordable homes’ at the new stadium site. “We want to see new housing and estate renewal in Tottenham benefiting old and new residents.”

   Spurs finance director Matthew Collecott announced a main contractor had been appointed to build a new Sainsbury’s supermarket, the first stage of Spurs’ stadium plan. The stadium leads the regeneration of the Northumberland Park area of Tottenham.

   The new stadium was scheduled to open in Summer 2016. Collecott said: “Last year’s huge unrest starkly showed how things can go wrong very quickly. Clearly, it’s in all our interests for local people to gain employment and for Spurs to help businesses grow the local economy.”

King Henry VIII hunted deer in the 16th Century in the area now known as Tottenham.

   The area grew through the centuries and by the 1930s became occupied by manufacturing and other industries.

   By 2012, some 90,000 people lived in Tottenham, now a long-established north London suburban area.

   Tottenham received national attention after serious rioting followed protests against the police shooting of local resident Mark Duggan.

   Ever since the 1985 riots at nearby estate, Broadwater Farm, a ‘mainstream media’ caricature denigrated Tottenham’s population as transient, criminal, violent and dependent on state handouts.

   In reality, generations of Tottenham residents faced a loss of local manufacturing jobs, neglected public and private sector housing, lowering land values, and a lack of public and private investment to create jobs and opportunities for local young people.

Local young people had by 2012 already demonstrated an appetite for business, green technologies, creative industries, social media and logistics.

   But persistently high levels of local youth unemployment since the 1980s contributed to young people focusing their futures away from Tottenham.

   Tottenham’s potential also rested on it being only seven miles north from central London but also blessed with open spaces, miles of river frontage, and good transport connections. 

   Tottenham Hale station was also earmarked as part of the preferred route option for Crossrail 2, a north-south new railway planned to connect Hackney with Chelsea and beyond.

... and Spurs’ future in Tottenham

The £436m new stadium development by Tottenham Hotspur was deemed vitally important by politicians and planners hoping to ‘regenerate’ the Tottenham area.

   Spurs, as the club is famously known, football club sought to exploit its established English Premier League status by replacing its traditional 36,000-seat home (above) with a new 56,000 capacity stadium.

   Spurs had intended to refurbish their existing White Hart Lane stadium, a plan lacking ambition given the favourable economic climate before the global financial crisis. After the crisis, Spurs failed in a move to the new Olympic Stadium in Stratford.

  The club focused on ambitiously redeveloping White Hart Lane. It committed itself publicly to helping regenerate Tottenham as an area after the August 2011 riots.   © Paul Coleman LONDON INTELLIGENCE 2012