Wanstead property: Spare any change?

georgecparker200x212Wansteadium property blogger George C Parker writes:

* What does half a mill get you these days in Wanstead?

According to Zoopla, five hundred bags gets you half of a 6-bed, 3-bath Seagry Road “period, detached, gated” house – a most noble location. Or it might bag you a pair of flats in the Herons, on New Wanstead, which have been changing hands for around 250k. The leftfield suggestion – one could also choose to put the money out to grass by purchasing the ‘Evergreen Field’ from its current owners. This week the Wanstead Guardian reported that Dalco Developments are willing to forgo their dreams of improving an eyesore on behalf of an ingracious populace. We wish them well in divesting themselves of this particular asset, and hope that if it works, the 250% return on their purchase price will be some compensation. (Thanks also to reader Diana who spotted the said property on Rightmove – feast your eyes on this, Wanstead.)

* Some people can’t resist a challenge. These cavaliers – these doers of derring, er do , are a different breed to the average Joe. They are the visionaries, a mega-motivated cadre of high fliers who’d climb Everest in the morning only to get bored five minutes after lunch. No doubt they’d head off to solve 300 Rubik’s cubes with the stickers removed, while smeared in sardine paste and weighted to the bottom of the orca enclosure at feeding time at Sea World. No limits, except those we set ourselves, say these people (they’re mostly estate agents). Like the guys who try to market a so-called “Unsellable House” down near the park gates in Aldersbrook. It’s been empty a decade, bought for 106k, and has been sorely messed with. What’s wrong with it? You’d have to remove the concrete foundations of a clandestine attempt at a garden house, and make good a stab at undermining the front garden, like the toffs do in Eaton Square. The poor old house is now a broken tooth in the middle of an otherwise respectable, English smile, to the infuriation of neighbours. Most of the local agencies have had a crack over the years, with the same result every time – there’s currently a three-month old Foxtons sign outside. Say no more.

* Here’s what I’d be tempted to do with the field fund – a very handsome, immaculately modernised Mansfield Road terrace with 3 bedrooms which has just come to the market with Douglas Allen. A couple of minutes stroll into the village where one can wander past the old Evergreen Field whenever one’s fancy is tickled.

*I’m afraid that the eyewatering rent being asked for certain vacant High Street units is stifling the process of replacing such stalwarts as Santa Fe and Rio (who we are very sorry to see leaving the High Street). One beautifully renovated, but as yet unfilled shop is being offered for a modest bounty of 25k per annum. Parker’s Glorious Emporium for the Ideal Wanstead home (my ambitious project for November) would be hard pressed clearing five hundred quid a week just for rent – tough times indeed in the brass knocker trade. Perhaps next year.

You can contact George at georgecparker@wansteadium.com

Hurrah for the glorious Wanstead 2,300

Wansteadium readers will know by now that crowing is not something that comes naturally to this website. And yet on the occasion of us passing three milestones in one week – 600 e-mail subscribers, 1,500 Twitter followers and 200 Facebook ‘Likes’ – we feel duty bound to awkwardly reach round and pat ourselves on the back, while simultaneously giving a jaunty salute to you, the generous and faithful people of Wanstead, for supporting us. Thank you.

crowing2

Good news for Nightingale Green

No sooner than Noel McMahon of the Nightingale pub had asked, on these pages, for help in tidying up Nightingale Green, than Wansteadium can bring the very welcome news that Redbridge council has secured £150,000 from Transport for London to improve the area.

The money will be spent on repaving the pavement outside the shops, on the corner around the pub, and all the way round the green. Other parts will have faux cobbles (tres rustique) installed. There will be seven new lampposts, and “junction protection measures” where Nightingale Green meets Eastway. It’s not clear from the papers, which are to be discussed by councillors at Monday’s Area One committee, what this means.

So Noel’s plea for volunteers to smarten up the green itself will be more welcome than ever.

 

Wanstead parking: Could this be peace?

permit2This may be folly to predict, but it seems as if peace might be about to break out in the Wanstead Parking Wars.

The long-awaited consultation of the “residents only” restrictions which were introduced last year to many streets in central Wanstead is to be discussed at next week’s Area One committee of Redbridge Borough Council.

Papers just published, in advance of that meeting, show that council officials are proposing a compromise which will create up to 120 short term parking spots around the High Street. Residents’ restrictions will be largely cut to just one hour from 11am to noon, and parts of two roads which currently have all day bans – Grove Park and Nightingale Lane – will now also have just a one-hour restriction.

The parking wars (which, as far as Wansteadium is aware, have not yet got beyond slightly heated sulking on either side) were created when residents restrictions were introduced to stop commuters parking all day in Wanstead streets from where they would go in to central London on the Tube. But retailers, office-workers and shoppers complained that it had become impossible to park in Wanstead to visit shops or cafes because there was just no parking available.

The council paper says: “The report draws the conclusion from the analysis of the varying views that some relaxation of the parking restrictions will be beneficial to the broader Wanstead populace while at the same time it will be important to continue to provide residents with some degree of protection. In effect, a compromise solution is offered in the recommendations.”

It adds: “All in all, the amendments to the current scheme proposed above should provide in the region of 75 to 80 additional short term parking places in the roads in the current [controlled parking zone] and a further 30 in Grove Park and Grosvenor Road. It should be stressed that this is considerably more short term parking provision than existed prior to the CPZ schemes being introduced given that most of the free bays in the one-hour ban on Spratt Hall Road were occupied by long stay parkers and Dangan and Addison Roads were heavily parked by commuters.”

The full proposals in the report – which will have to be approved by councillors – are:

To introduce one-hour residents permit schemes, operating from 11am to noon on weekdays, on:

  • Addison Road and Dangan Road and Spratt Hall Road at the Cambridge Park end only
  • the ChristChurch Green side of Spratt Hall Road between Woodbine Place and Wanstead Place
  • Chaucer Road at the Spratt Hall Road end only (noting that the remainders of Spratt Hall Road, Chaucer Road, Dangan Road and Addison Road will remain as they are now)
  • the gravelled area outside Christ Church in Wanstead Place

The current all day restriction in the first section of Grove Park and The Avenue, and the first section of Nightingale Lane, will be converted to a one-hour ban yellow line (9.30 to 10.30).

In terms of achieving a compromise, the officers may have reached some sort of conclusion, but it is unlikely that everyone will be happy. People living in Grove Park and the Avenue may well object, though the larger houses there have off-street parking.

But while shops and cafes will welcome the general relaxation, probably with garlands and kisses, there may well be debate about the timing of the restriction. Whereas the one-hour limit in some parts of Wanstead is 9.30-10.30, the new proposed 11am-noon limit may leave those relying on a lunchtime trade frustrated.

wansteadtalkwideThe debate which has raged for so long will now continue, especially at next week’s meeting. In the meantime, Wanstead Talk (our messageboard for civilised Wanstead conversation) is open for business on the subject of parking at this page.