London's iconic Covent Garden Market gets green light for multi-billion revamp

London’s iconic Covent Garden Market is in line for a revamp. Joint venture development partners Vinci and St Modwen have obtained planning for the £2 billion regeneration in central London.

The development will transform the 57-acre site situated next to Vauxhall Cross in the Nine Elms regeneration zone and has been approved by the Covent Garden Market Authority.

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Construction of the multi-phase scheme will take around 10 years, including the development of 550,000 sqft of modern facilities to house the 200 businesses that make up the UK’s largest fruit, vegetable and flower market. Construction work will be funded from the release of 20 acres of surplus land for a residential led mixed-use regeneration scheme. Much of this will be built on a separate site joined by a 1km linear park.

In total more than 3,000 new homes, 135,000 sqft of new office space and 100,000 sqft of retail and leisure facilities will be built. Development and construction on the original market site will start in 2015; development of surplus land will get underway in 2017.

Vinci Construction UK has been earmarked to construct the new market, with other firms likely to be brought on board to build the later housing projects. The developers have agreed to feed £91m into local infrastructure improvements. The money will be spent on a series of local transport upgrades including the now approved Northern Line Extension.

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Sarah McDermott, chairman of the council’s planning committee, said: “This project covers five distinct development plots, the largest being the new wholesale market itself which will be overhauled to provide a 21st Century trading space for the food and flower businesses. The current flower market site would make way for a series of new buildings including three towers which will form part of the Vauxhall tall building cluster.”