Grenfell Tower to be demolished.

[AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta]

News - Grenfell to be demolished, bereaved families told www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq5g99xy979o BBC News - Grenfell to be demolished, bereaved families told www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq5g99xy979o

I can understand why some people want it torn down and a nice memorial there instead. But I also see why some want it left as it's a final resting place to so many.

It's such a tiny little corner. Seems crazy it was built there
(Although I don't know what was there before the Secondary School and Sports Centre next door were there)

It's actually kind of a nice little area, and I think people really don't recognise how densely crowded it is, both residentially and in terms of foot traffic. In addition to a vast stretch of social housing, there are streets of little row houses and cottages down to one side. There's an extensive pedestrian walkway system that goes back towards the leisure centre. The tiny little primary (St Francis of Assisi) is lovely. Kensington Aldridge Academy has I think been there for around ten years and is a really interesting school.

It would be shockingly disruptive to try to build there.

@w10mum3 yes it is a nice little area.
People seem to instantly think "council estate" so must be terrible but it's not.

If we were in China they would demolish it quickly and build a new tower in its place to meet the huge demand for housing.

Can’t believe it’s going to take 2 years to demolish. The cost and impact of this is crazy. Get rid quick and put a nice community centre or similar in its place.

The only way to take it down quickly is to use explosives. Even if they could do that in this area (doubtful), it would be a pretty crappy thing to do, given the disaster that happened there. Taking it down bit by bit, safely, is a difficult thing to do. That said, it won't take 2 years to dismantle it, there also needs to be ground works and remediation after the tower is down. There will be hundreds of thousands of tonnes of material to be taken off site, and because everything has to be sorted for recycling, that takes time.

Also worth noting, the will need to survey it, design the demolition works, get it out to tender and appoint a contractor. All of that can take 6 months. Not at all unusual for any construction project.

London needs housing. Seriously.

All building is "disruptive" - it needs to happen anyway.

Yes but the place where Grenfell flats were (are) is not a safe place to build a new block. Access to it is bad - the fire engines had problems getting close enough.
There is currently loads of flats being built all over London at the moment. You can't move for building sites.
But this tiny little area of land just isn't sensible for a replacement block.

@GreenTeaLikesMe

I don't think anyone is disputing that London needs housing, although, to be honest, a lot of new builds in the area seem sit mostly empty. I'm not sure why you're choosing to argue over this, but if you're not local, I'd suggest you go walk around the site.

You'd have to find a developer who believed it would be in their interest to build there. And considering the inevitable community opposition - the consultations would very likely go on for years, the need to deal with the site contamination, the size of the footprint and the access issues, I think you'd have a hard time. If the fire engines could barely get in, how will the construction equipment? And since the footprint is so small, the only thing that would make sense is another tower, and I struggle to see that going down well locally.

Agree with pp. It's worth a look at the area on Google maps, if you aren't able to get there in person.

No one will build on it, for the simple fact it's a mass grave and the backlash would immense. Even Angela Rayner, with her lets build everywhere attitude, wouldn't dare do that.

The only thing they will do is make a memorial there.

I don’t believe there is anyway the site will be developed for housing in my lifetime.

The government owns the site. Successive governments have committed to there being a memorial on the site and this has been set out publicly http://www.grenfelltowermemorial.co.uk/principles

It seems vanishingly unlikely that the community and bereaved would collectively back housing over a memorial and once a memorial has gone up it’s not coming down.

Angela doesn't care about local communities, she has just given the green light to the third runway at Heathrow, the thousands of additional flights will cause misery for hundreds of thousands of people who live close to the flight path and she couldn't care less.

There's an interesting thought experiment to be had about whether there'd be more homes built if the site were actually conducive to it. But it's not practical.