Right down the line

Stephen Jordan

For Stephen Jordan, the transformation that CTRL will effect along its route is not a desirable side-effect, but a fundamental driver of the whole project. As managing director of London & Continental Railways’ stations and property division, Jordan is responsible for the redevelopment of the land around King’s Cross, Stratford and to a lesser extent Ebbsfleet – and for him that’s the most exciting part of the project.

“The regeneration of Thames Gateway is a key reason why CTRL comes into London the way it does,” he says. “There are great opportunities for revitalising the areas around the international stations. We wanted these areas to be really well developed because we wanted the stations to be busy and thriving, not set in seas of desolation. “It’s great for us to be able to fashion the microclimates around the stations and make the transport hubs safe, comfortable and easy for passengers to negotiate.”

Jordan has been involved with CTRL since the beginning, although his background is not in property but business development. He was seconded from coach operator National Express – one of the project’s shareholders – for six months to help out with the bid. “They could see the opportunity for making new sorts of stations, so I came in to help them look at how they and the property side could work. That was more than 10 years ago – in the end I suppose it got under my skin.”

Jordan’s not the only one with an unconventional background – the LCR team is an eclectic mix of surveyors, planners and business development professionals. “We’re not a traditional property company and I think that actually helps us,” says Jordan. “We’re a small team but we’ve got complementary skills.” He picks out for a special mention David Joy, director of planning, and Stephen Bowman, the property director, who came from BAA and who “knows chapter and verse about compulsory acquisition”. Then there is Roger Groom, the development director, who “has an innate sense of what will and won’t work in terms of property”, and Mike Luddy who is setting up the new stations as attractive destinations, and was formerly commercial director for Newcastle and Bristol airports.

We wanted the stations to be busy and thriving, not set in seas of desolation

Once the bid was won, the first of Jordan’s responsibilities was assembling the 6000 property interests needed for the CTRL route, and negotiating with more than 11,000 interested parties. “It was lots of paper, lots of people and we only had one forceable possession.”

Jordan and Joy struck a deal with the government to buy the vast regeneration sites surrounding Stratford and King’s Cross for existing use values, undertake development with private sector partners and then split the profits with the government 50:50. He was also involved in enabling work at Ebbsfleet and Ashford (see pages 38-40). Most recently, he has been negotiating with the London Development Agency and Stratford City Developments on the delivery of the Olympic park on the lands around the international station.

To kick off the developments, LCR established core teams at King’s Cross and Stratford. “There’s an amazing number of people working on both developments 24/7,” says Jordan. He had a simple criterion for choosing which firms to work with. “Our aim has been to develop long-term partnerships, to find developers who’ve got a long-term view and are willing to commit the most senior resource to help us. We said ‘these are huge schemes, we’re going to need your top people working on it’.”

For schemes of the magnitude of King’s Cross and Stratford, a traditional approach was never going to work. “We always said six weeks is not enough time to come back and tell us how you’re going to develop 50 ha of new London,” says Jordan. “So we went for a development rather than a design competition. We wanted to know what their attitude was, what sort of resources they’d devote to it, what their approach would be, because over time the masterplan will evolve. On these big schemes where you’re effectively creating a new piece of London, it’s the streets, the squares, the basic fabric that will become part of London. Over the years the buildings will change – the buildings are important but it’s how that new piece of London knits into the rest that is enduring.”

For example, on the 27 ha King’s Cross Central development, Argent has hired not one masterplanning architect but a whole team. “There’s quite a range of people. There’s a really good landscape architect, other architects who understand big infrastructure stuff, ones who understand the urban grain a bit better, others that are starting to design specific elements like how the retail will work … There’s a fascinating amount of teamwork.”

When the 13.5 million ft2 Stratford City was granted planning permission in September last year, for example, it had taken just 18 months without a planning enquiry

Construction couldn’t get started until work on the CTRL was complete, but that was far from a frustration, Jordan says they have been able to gain a deeper understanding of what would suit local communities. “That was really good because it meant we spent several years building up these relationships with the councils and started to work with them; even before we selected our partners.”

We said: ‘What do you want in the area? What are the aspirations? What housing do you want? What sort of jobs could we get?’ So even though we’ve got development partners, we’ve had that long-term direct relationship.”

Joy, LCR’s planning expert, agrees: “From day one, we involved regeneration bodies such as the King’s Cross Partnership and Stratford Tomorrow’s City. Each had about £50m of government money, and we sat on the board and helped to spend it on employment training, business advice, environmental and housing improvements and the general economic regeneration of the wider area.”

This meant a much smoother ride when it came to the planning process. When the 13.5 million ft2 Stratford City was granted planning permission in September last year, for example, it had taken just 18 months without a planning enquiry – remarkable for an area the size of Canary Wharf with a much broader mix of uses, including 2 million ft2 of retail space, 2000 hotel beds and a city academy. “The mutual aspirations got built into the planning framework, so there were no surprises,” Jordan says. “It was a collaborative process. It took a lot of time but it meant that when our partners started to map things out, we had this dialogue with local authorities and it was all pointing in the same direction.”

After the CTRL is up and running in 2007, the work of LCR’s property team will begin in earnest. It is currently recruiting the team that will run its stations, under the auspices of Network Rail CTRL, but Jordan is looking forward to continuing his involvement with the surrounding area for some time to come. “In terms of property, we’ll be active until at least 2012 making these very big developments happen. It’s really the meat of how we take this fantastic building project and make it part of the fabric of London and Kent.”