Plans for a 54-storey residential tower at Canary Wharf have secured planning approval, paving the way for one of the UK’s largest integrated multi-tenure housing developments.
Developer Areli and British Airways Pension Trustees have received consent from the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to redevelop 77 Marsh Wall, replacing the site’s existing 17-storey office building with a 190-metre-high tower providing 820 homes.
The early 1990s office block will be demolished to make way for a new mixed-tenure residential community designed by Patel Taylor. The development will bring together build-to-rent apartments, serviced accommodation, co-living homes, intermediate housing and social rented properties within a single scheme.
Areli said the project would create one of London’s broadest housing offers, with affordable homes fully integrated throughout the development rather than delivered as a separate element.
The concrete-framed tower will rise from a three-storey podium incorporating more than 3,100 sq m of publicly accessible open space. Proposals include a new Dockside Garden and Community Garden, alongside almost 200 sq m of community facilities and approximately 430 sq m of retail space.
Residents will also have access to a comprehensive range of shared amenities, including co-working areas, a cinema, gym, swimming pool, communal kitchens, lounges and landscaped terraces.
The consultant team includes Gardiner & Theobald as quantity surveyor, while Aecom is providing structural engineering and building services design.
Areli estimates that the redevelopment could support approximately 2,200 construction jobs each year during the build programme. Once operational, the completed development is expected to create the equivalent of 151 full-time jobs.
Rob Tincknell, founder and chief executive of Areli, said the consent would allow the developer to progress a scheme bringing together a genuinely broad range of housing options alongside an integrated affordable housing provision.
“We’re extremely pleased to have secured consent for 77 Marsh Wall, which allows us to move ahead with delivering a scheme that brings together a genuinely broad range of homes that make this development the largest of its kind in the UK, alongside a fully integrated on-site affordable housing offer,” he said.
Tincknell established Areli in 2018 after previously leading the Battersea Power Station regeneration. The 77 Marsh Wall approval represents the developer’s fourth major residential planning consent in the past year, increasing its consented development pipeline to almost 3,000 homes.
The project will add further momentum to the transformation of the Isle of Dogs and Canary Wharf, where former commercial sites are increasingly being redeveloped as high-density, mixed-use residential neighbourhoods.
Details of the construction timetable and main contractor procurement process have yet to be announced.
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