Demolition City: What will a new stadium for Spurs mean for Tottenham residents?
Love hurts down the Lane
By Paul Coleman
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| "Being a Spurs fan doesn't mean I agree with what the club are doing" - Vincent Gillespie, lifelong Tottenham Hotspur fan. Photo: © Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, 2014 |
(Saturday, 6 December)
Vincent Gillespie
stands outside his beloved Tottenham Hotspur in dazzling sunshine.
Gillespie sports a traditional wool scarf, decked in the football club’s navy blue and white colours.
Gillespie, aged
66, born in Tottenham - and a resident of the nearby Chestnut Estate - has supported his local north London football club as a season
ticket-holder for over 50 years.
This dedicated Spurs supporter is
one of 36,000 fans about to fill the famous club’s 115-year-old White Hart
Lane stadium.
As a Spurs fan,
Gillespie hopes that Spurs will beat rivals, Crystal Palace, in this afternoon's English
Premiership clash.
But, as a
Tottenham-born resident, Gillespie believes Tottenham
Hotspur Football Club - the business - is “a disgrace”.
“Both the club
and the local authority – Haringey Council – don’t give a damn about the people
who've lived in Tottenham all of their lives,” says Gillespie.
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| 'Major sport-led regeneration' © Paul Coleman, London Intelligence 2014 |
'Sport-led regeneration'
So, before clicking through the stadium turnstile, Gillespie adds his voice to those of a small band of local residents.
They’re
gathered on the pavement outside a local library over the road from the stadium.
Their mission is to try and win the match-day hearts and minds of thousands of passing Spurs fans.
They want the fans to support their protest against plans by Spurs and Haringey that will likely demolish and redevelop
hundreds of council homes (publicly subsidised housing).
Tottenham
Hotspur’s current owners and Haringey’s existing political leaders believe the
club’s new 56,000-capacity ‘world class stadium’ – to be built on a site acquired adjacent to the
club’s longstanding home – will bring ‘new jobs, new shops and new
homes’ to this part of Tottenham.
Haringey and
Spurs herald the new stadium and its plans for the surrounding High Road West
and Northumberland Park areas as ‘major sport-led regeneration for Tottenham’.
The new stadium might not be ready until at least mid-2018.
Nobody from Tottenham Hotspur Football Club was available for comment.
Indeed, many local residents, like Gillespie, originally supported the
club’s expansion plans.
But, like many other local residents, Gillespie now believes that
Spurs’ stadium ‘regeneration’ plan threatens hundreds of
council tenants and leaseholders, local shops and businesses.
For instance, a new fans’ walkway from White Hart Lane railway station
to the new stadium could mean the demolition and redevelopment of 300 publicly
subsidised homes on the Love Lane council housing estate.
Campaigners under the banner of ‘Haringey Defend Council Housing’ say
the walkway would also destroy the library, a medical centre, and 120
businesses on the nearby Peacock Estate.
HDCH says another 1,000 homes on the Northumberland Park estate to the
east of Spurs’ ground might also face demolition.
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| Part of the Love Lane estate that stands in the path of a new Spurs walkway. © Paul Coleman, London Intelligence 2014 |
Opportunity
In September 2014, Haringey Council state in a press release that 'all secure council tenants on the Love Lane Estate would be guaranteed a new home in the new development'.
The Council says it will aim 'to phase the work so residents only have to make one move -with their neighbours - into their new home'.
Councillor Alan Strickland, Haringey's Cabinet Member for Housing and Regeneration says: "I share residents' passion to use this once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform our community for the better, and I hope that as many people as possible have their say.'
Earlier, in March 2014, Love Lane residents had urged Haringey to provide them with a 'fair share of the benefits of the redevelopment, adequate compensation, affordable choices, and for residents to be treated sensitively and to be taken seriously'.
Dispossession
But no development partner for Love Lane has yet been announced - and HDCH supporters ardently fear Spurs wider regeneration plans will replace council homes with luxury
apartments totally unaffordable for most local people.
They say regeneration will mean that local people, who have lived in their traditional Tottenham
neighbourhood for generations, will face eviction or compulsory purchase, dispossession, displacement
and the break-up of their long-standing family, social and community networks.
In short, Gillespie and other residents see a future blighted by
uncertainty, financial stress and misery.
Lose homes
“The Council should have put resources into this area years ago," says Gillespie. "Not just now, because the football club wants new facilities.
"They don’t give a damn
about the people who’ve lived in Tottenham all their lives.
"Being a Tottenham fan doesn't mean I agree with what the club is doing.
Gillespie, a former councillor himself, hopes other Spurs fans will think beyond just being a Spurs supporter.
"I hope Spurs fans will think about the Tottenham people who could lose their homes."
A full version of this story will be published in due course on London Intelligence.
© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, December 2014
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