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department move into a new building designed by Stanton Williams, and incorporating the historic granary shed. It’s a masterstroke because it immediately creates buzz. Around 4,500 students and staff milling about will at once create a viable customer base – that elusive and much-craved for ‘foot- fall’ for the cafes and restaurants, the shops, as well as up to 50 planned arts and music venues. This influx might even help lure companies to planned office buildings on the site; firms which will want to be associated with energy, youth and cre- ativity – or even a workforce on the doorstep. The first offices and homes are expected in 2012, with the initial tranche of stu- dents arriving for the September entrance in 2011. As with all almost all new mixed use developments, retail is
another powerful and necessary ingredient. Part of Argent’s rationale has been to create a mixed shopping experience, adding Camden-lock type attractions plus other boutique and independent shops in the restored Coal Drops as well as the required supermarket offerings amongst a total of 500,000sq ft of premises. Offices, with designs from architects such as Allies and Morrison and Glenn Howells will nestle amongst new spaces for leisure, while student housing will feature alongside
other residential, a construction skills centre, school, and health facilities. All powered by an on-site energy centre which may even send surpluses back to the National Grid. Just over on the other side of York Way, one of the early pio-
neers of the area, forecasting change, was the Guardian news- paper and its sister title The Observer, which moved in 2008 from its former home in Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell to an innovative new facility on the canal. The award-winning King’s Place, designed by Dixon Jones, is an unusual combination of newspaper offices and concert hall, plus conference facilities, galleries and a dining venue. Further south, Regent Quarter is a residential, offices and retail block which has also aimed to capitalise on all this regenerational hubbub. Over at the main King’s Cross station, meanwhile, the facil-
ities are getting a much needed improvement, partially through the moves to upgrade the tube facilities to meet extra travel numbers. This will entail a large amount of work by architect John McAslan which includes finally getting rid of the ugly 1970s frontage to the station which has been ‘tempo- rary’ for too long, masking the original building’s listed front facade. In time – though not quite before the Olympics arrives
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