After a gap of 5 years Fenwick present new scheme for Thames Side Wharf next to John Lewis

TL;DR Fenwick is reviving plans for its long-vacant Thames Side Wharf site beside Water Lane and the Thames. The emerging proposal contains around 135 to 145 flats in two buildings rising to 12 storeys and stepping down to 10, with restaurants, commercial space and a substantial redesign of the riverside public realm. It is lower and calmer than the abandoned 16-storey London Square scheme of 2021. Much of the detail is still evolving, however, and some of the most attractive riverside ideas remain aspirational. Most troublingly, the developers currently expect no affordable housing on the site, only a possible financial contribution determined through viability testing.

The Kingston Society recently met representatives of Fenwick and its development team for an early look at the latest proposals for Thames Side Wharf, the two vacant plots between Water Lane, Vicarage Road, John Lewis and the Thames.

Present for the Society were Tony Lancaster, John Allen, Anthony Evans and Stephen Coates. The project was presented by Shaun Lyons of Define Land, development manager for Fenwick, Nick Ralls, director of Lyons+Sleeman+Hoare Architects, and Tom Batchelor of Kanda Consulting, which is leading community engagement.

A site with a long planning history Thames Side Wharf has been awaiting development for well over a decade. An earlier scheme for 97 homes, commercial uses and a new riverside square received permission in 2013 but was never built. Fenwick subsequently entered into an agreement with London Square, which produced proposals in 2021 for two much larger buildings, including a 16-storey tower. That scheme attracted considerable criticism and never reached the planning application stage.

Fenwick is now promoting the site itself, with Define Land managing the development process. The team said its intention was to secure permission for a viable scheme which could actually be delivered. Fenwick is not a housebuilder, however, and the eventual development and construction arrangements have not yet been decided.

The ownership and highway arrangements are unusually complicated. Fenwick owns the two development plots, which are divided by Steadfast Road, while adjoining land is variously owned by Kingston Council, adopted as public highway or held on a long lease by John Lewis. Fenwick does not control the river or all the land immediately beside it. This matters because some of the scheme’s most attractive public realm proposals will depend upon the cooperation of the Council, the Environment Agency, Thames Water and other interested parties.

Two buildings rather than one The architects have considered joining the plots with a single building spanning Steadfast Road, as well as moving the road to create one consolidated site. They concluded that two separate buildings offered a better response to the site, particularly when seen from the south and from the river. It also provides a more workable solution under current building safety requirements, including the need for two staircases, larger cores and more complex escape arrangements.

The emerging scheme contains approximately 135 to 145 flats, although the figure is changing as the design develops. The buildings would rise to 12 storeys and step down to 10 towards the eastern end. This is appreciably lower than the 2021 proposal and closer to the scale of the earlier permitted scheme, although it would contain considerably more homes than the 97 previously approved.

The accommodation would range from a small number of studios through one, two and three-bedroom flats, including some larger family-sized homes. The team said the proposed mix was broadly aligned with Council policy and that the flats would exceed the Mayor of London’s minimum space standards.

The development would be essentially car-free, apart from blue badge parking and space for servicing and deliveries. A substantial amount of cycle storage would be concentrated in the larger building, where the architects hope to create a visible and well-used cycle hub rather than a blank ground-floor store.

Reclaiming the riverside from traffic The strongest part of the proposal is its attempt to transform an unattractive and traffic-dominated stretch of the river. At present, Thames Side accommodates road space, motorcycle parking, coach stopping and access to the pumping station. The project team proposes closing much of this area to ordinary vehicles while retaining pedestrian and cycle movement, emergency access and the access required to maintain the pumping station.

Steadfast Road would remain the exit route from the Bentall Centre car parks, but the highway arrangement would be narrowed and proper crossing points introduced. The intention is to make it easier and safer to move between the two buildings and to reduce the dominance of traffic. A vehicle turning area would also allow drivers who mistakenly enter Thames Side to turn around without continuing along the restricted road.

The proposed public realm includes trees, planted areas, seating, sustainable drainage swales and informal play features. A new restaurant or café would face the river, with a covered terrace occupying an area designed to tolerate occasional flooding. The team hopes that new activity here could also support neighbouring businesses and help reconnect a rather lifeless stretch of waterfront between Kingston Bridge and Canbury Gardens.

There are also ideas for floating planting, a pontoon and steps or platforms allowing people to get closer to the water. These could provide ecological benefits as well as making the riverside more engaging. They are, however, outside the present application boundary and remain aspirational. Delivery will depend upon other landowners, statutory bodies and questions surrounding the existing moorings and the future of Turks Pier.

That distinction is important. The proposed landscape could transform this forgotten corner of Kingston, but the planning application will need to make clear which improvements are funded, controlled and guaranteed, and which are illustrations of what might happen one day.

A deliberately quieter architecture The architects described their approach as contemporary but calm. They are not seeking a building which shouts across the skyline. Each building would have a clearly expressed base, main body and upper crown, tied together by a regular structural grid. The two buildings would share an architectural language without being identical.

The palette under consideration includes pale buff or stone colours, brickwork, metalwork and ceramic or metal panels at the upper levels. The architects argued that Kingston’s larger dark red-brick buildings can appear heavy and oppressive, and that a lighter palette might sit more comfortably beside the river. Balconies would be incorporated in several forms, including full-width and inset balconies, rather than being applied indiscriminately to the elevations.

Particular attention is being given to the uppermost floors and rooftop equipment. Air-source heat pumps and other plant would be set back or incorporated within the building rather than deposited visibly on the roof. Photovoltaic panels are currently proposed for one building and blue and green roofs for the other. Public or communal roof terraces are also being considered.

These are still design-development images, not finished architecture. Colours, materials, balcony details and the treatment of the crowns remain unsettled. The test will be whether the promised calmness produces buildings of genuine depth and refinement, rather than merely large pale blocks.

What will Kingston see? The project team presented a series of early townscape studies from Kingston Bridge, the Market Place and around All Saints Church. From most positions in the historic centre, only small parts of the buildings would be visible above or beside existing development. The architects said verified views were being prepared because the preliminary digital townscape model was not sufficiently precise for the final assessment.

The Society asked about views from Bushy Park, Hampton Court, Canbury Gardens, the river to the south, Fairfield and the approach from Kingston Station. It also requested views from the east and from around the neighbouring student accommodation. The architects said these viewpoints were being examined, including the formal view from Canbury Gardens in which the buildings must be assessed without relying upon existing trees to conceal them.

This work will be critical. A building can make very little impact in a carefully selected Market Place view while still becoming a significant feature of the river skyline. The complete set of verified views, including cumulative development already permitted or proposed elsewhere in Kingston, will therefore matter more than the few relatively reassuring images shown at this meeting.

Commercial space and the danger of empty frontages The ground floor would include a riverside restaurant or café and a smaller commercial unit facing the street. The latter is more likely to accommodate a gym, health, wellbeing, education or activity-based use than conventional retail. The developers accept that this is not a natural extension of the Bentall Centre’s shopping frontage.

The Society questioned whether Kingston needs more speculative commercial space which may struggle to attract a lasting occupier. Empty ground-floor units do not create active frontage, however attractive they appear in a planning visualisation. Royal Exchange and other recent developments demonstrate how quickly the promise of cafés, gyms and commercial animation can become shuttered windows and blank frontage.

The team responded that the commercial space had deliberately been limited to those locations where it had a reasonable prospect of success. Residential accommodation could not simply replace it because the site is at risk of flooding and homes would not be permitted at ground level. Cycle storage, plant, transformers, servicing and other building requirements also consume much of the available frontage.

That explanation is reasonable, but it does not remove the need for realism. The planning application should show that the commercial units are flexible, capable of subdivision or adaptation and not dependent upon a single optimistic use.

The affordable housing retreat The most troubling part of the discussion concerned affordable housing. The project team said that providing 20 per cent affordable housing would not be viable and that the application was therefore likely to follow the viability-tested route. Its present expectation is that the scheme would contain no affordable homes on site, with a financial contribution made instead.

This would be a profoundly disappointing outcome for a development of up to 145 homes on a prominent town-centre site. It is also a striking retreat from the abandoned London Square proposal, which was promoted in 2021 as providing 35 per cent affordable housing.

The difficulties of building on a constrained riverside site are real. Flood protection, public realm, highway changes, building safety requirements and two separate building cores all have costs. But viability is not a force of nature. It depends upon land value, development assumptions, expected sales values, profit and the costs attributed to the scheme. These assumptions will require particularly close and transparent examination.

A financial contribution may help fund affordable housing elsewhere, but it cannot reproduce the social value of mixed-tenure homes within the development itself. The scheme promises to reconnect this part of Kingston to the river. It should not do so by creating an enclave from which households unable to afford riverside market prices are entirely absent.

What happens next Public consultation is expected to begin in September, following earlier pop-up engagement in the Bentall Centre. The developers were aiming to submit a planning application by the end of October, although they acknowledged that a considerable amount of technical and design work remains.

There is much in the emerging scheme worth developing. The reduction from the previous 16-storey proposal is welcome. The separation into two buildings appears more convincing than bridging the road, and the prospect of turning a hostile stretch of highway and neglected waterfront into a planted public place is attractive.

The unresolved questions are equally substantial. The public realm must be deliverable rather than illustrative. Strategic and local views must be tested comprehensively. Commercial uses must be based on a realistic understanding of Kingston’s market. The buildings themselves must achieve the architectural quality demanded by this exceptionally sensitive riverside location.