please empty your brain below

The economics of that 25 lease on city hall at £11m+ a year on a building that cost about £45m astonish me. If you took out a mortgage on that, it would be about £4m a year. I guess it was to do with a Blairite obsession with PPP and keeping debt off the government accounts.

I think there are arguments in favour of moving the government to a more suburban location; perhaps it will focus minds on improving the outer areas rather than a focus on the centre
And is moving to a location with serious accessibility difficulties for a great deal of the capital a good thing?
On the basis that 99% of Londoners never need to go to City Hall, I'm sure a cablecar, DLR station and Crossrail station will suffice.
This seems like a good decision to me to be honest. City Hall is an awful building, and there is absolutely no need for the seat of government to be in a crazy expensive part of the capital. Sure, it will make it harder for the members for Harrow and Hounslow to attend, but maybe it will also help them solve those problems too. Might focus a few minds when they’re in the sticks.
terrific photos today DG.
I expect City Hall will have to make many tough financial decisions over the next few years, so making an early one to reduce their own costs is good optics for the "we're all in this together" vibe.
Takes city hall of the jubilee line which is where the other key links are; TfL (Stratford and Southwark), central government (Westminster), Met police (Westminster), London Fire Brigade (London Bridge).

Also, having worked with the GLA I know an awful lot of people live in areas where they get the train into London Bridge. A commute to Royal Docks will be a pig of a journey. But money talks!

I wonder what will happen to City Hall.
I had no idea this building existed. Thanks for the background info, DG - a rather informative post. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
I think this is a good thing, it still is something of a vanity location, if it overlooked a scrapyard instead of water they'd have been less keen, my only concern is costs running away when they modify the building, with contractors blaming the non-standard construction and its 'unique challenges'.

I wonder how much it costs to keep all those surfaces at funny angles shiny.
Consultation or more a tactic to renegotiate the lease?

The current landlord may be more receptive to striking a new deal than trying to find new tenants / reconfigure the current City Hall given the current economic outlook.

Re: The Crystal, do they really harvest rain for drinking water? Can't be right.
I'd never heard of the Crystal building before last week, and certainly never heard of the exhibition!

I agree with Ian above, the economics of City Hall seem mad, but it is a distinctive building and to me the Mayor and GLA should be somewhere central. Why not stick them in Slade Green or Enfield if you want somewhere cheap
I have had the (mis?)fortune to visit this place no less than three times (and nearly a fourth - where I couldn't even contemplate just using the café).

The first time was to see the exhibition not long after it opened, and was deeply disappointed both with the amount of wasted space alongside the paucity of the exhibits themselves, simplistic and of very poor quality. Nothing had changed when I took a friend there a few years later, we needed the café and toilets mainly.

The third time was for a conference ironically organised by the GLA itself, with access to the exhibition included. This was after pricing was introduced a couple of years ago, and yet nothing had changed inside, what a rip off for anyone who went then, the exhibits had not dated well.
This rather makes me think of that wonderful (imho) dark comedy League of Gentlemen', and to mis-quote along the lines of "We're a local council for local people".
Scrap the Mayors position would save £1m every 7 years in his wages alone, and significantly more with all the hangars on. Media interviews on a balcony with the Silvertown Viaduct and sunset does not have the same cudos as the present backdrop.
I'd also never heard of it... and I work for Siemens!

I wonder if the photo of a line of Bin Bags in front the building was deliberat symbolism on DG's part :D
Aren't we all forgetting that Crossrail is supposed to make it easier for travel between West London, Central London and the depths of East London?

It might even be open by the time City Hall moves east.
This idea of "consulting" the public has got out of hand. On this and on everything else, those with power will do what they want to do, whatever the public says.
We don't "consult" five year olds about them going to school. So why offer citizens a pretended choice?
Reminds me of a plan I dreamed up; move parliament to a purpose-built, state of the art, building at Luton.

Luton area gains kudos and knock-on regeneration

Parliament gets superb facilities and good road, rail and air access,

Taxpayers get rid of a high maintenance and inadequate building.

Tourists get a new Museum of Britain/England/What Have You in central London.

Apart from the initial cost I can only see benefits.
It's more likely that rainwater is harvested for flushing the loos.

Also, Siemens Brothers and Company had quite a big presence in East London, albeit Woolwich and Dalston. That said, their sister company in Germany (what's now Siemens AG) were engaged in some unsavoury practices during WWII, so perhaps that's a good enough reason to change the street's name.
For the rainwater-sceptics, it is indeed filtered, purified and treated with UV to provide drinking water.
Stunning sky in the first photo. What a cracking picture.

I think it's a very sensible idea to move to the Crystal. It's good to finally see a prominent figure willing to forego the trappings and prestige of being in a prime location for the benefit of greater good.
Why can't they reoccupy County Hall? I know it's occupied by the hospitality and tourist industry at present, but that's not going to be a feature of London now for the next 10 years or more.

dg writes: And 605 luxury apartments..
I went to the opening of The Crystal and booked it for an event once. It was a good effort by Siemens in everything expect the choice of location. Their commitment to making the building itself energy and resource efficient (rainwater collection, on-site solar generation, energy efficient air-handling) was good and well explained in the exhibit. It must have been a huge frustration for the staff there not to see much footfall.
I am idly wondering whether it will cost a big fat chunk of money to retrofit it to be a suitable replacement - debating chamber, security (as mentioned in the post), etc.
London Bridge to City Hall is approx 10 min walk, Canning Town to Crystal approx 15 min walk. It will still be very much on the Jubilee Line and now Crossrail with the Custom House connection.

I very much support this. It can be a real dead zone round there at the moment and this would finally give it some gravitas. Although as I've read elsewhere this could all just be a ploy to try and spook City Hall's owners into massively reducing the rent at a time when they're really going to struggle to fill it with any other tenant.
My son loves the place, he got in free and I had to pay. Most of the exhibition was a bit duff, I was a fan of the Tesla coil but it wasn't working last time we went. I didn't know the exhibition had closed, that'll save me a few quid.
Assuming the Newham Council offices three stops along on the DLR have a debating chamber, they could always share that rather than create a new one.
If TfL still has an office at North Greenwich, we might see trips on the cable car grow as staff pop between the office and Crystal City Hall.
TfL Staff don't get free travel on the Cable Car, and it runs so slowly most of the time that it's often quicker to go round the houses on the Jubilee line.
Thanks Ralph, I didn’t know that. It led me to search for the original naming deal. Emirates’ 10-year sponsorship was announced on 7 October 2011. I don’t the lifespan of a cable car and I know there’s been calls for it to be scrapped but if the London Assembly moves to the Crystal, we might we see changes to the fares including TfL staff passes next year.
Exactly how many of the office workers at City Hall actually need to be there? Home working anybody? If everything is either outsourced or home-worked piecework, GLA only needs a space for the windbags and grand-standers. They could use Wimbledon LTA during the year when the tennis isn't on. £££££££'s saved!
I've tried to visit this exhibition 3 times and failed. Ah well.
I've been to the Crystal, and was impressed that the building really does have every sustainable thing around, including some rather intriguing rotational heat exchangers for the ventilation. I wonder if city hall's presence may lead to the nearby planned-but-never-built Thames Wharf DLR station actually happening.
Home-working is overrated and joyless.
Not everyone wants to sit at home on their own all day. Offices exist because of the synergies that arise from having lots of people in the same place and interacting with each other.

However, central London office space is currently unbelievably expensive, so maybe this gome-working interrugnum will knock some sense into the market.
Wonder though if there is enough ancillary office space at the Crystal site for the County Hall staff. Though being redeveloped Docklands there won't be any great shortage of office buildings they will need to be in close vicinity.

Also what about the London City Airport. Maybe handy having it so close, but is aircraft noise a consideration?
Wanted to also say to DG, have only the other day just discovered your site. Fascinating and extraordinary. I'm an ex-Londoner, (SW outskirts) lived worked and studied there but for many years now expat in Germany and elsewhere. So it's great to find out about what is going on in London and read about some of the esoteric and little known things about this amazing world city. Great job DG!
This building also turned up as a police unit's HQ in 'Bulletproof'.
I'm glad I went to the exhibition. There were maybe about 3 other people there during the course of my visit. A check of my credit card statement reveals an £8 payment to Sodexo Siemens on 1 June 2014 - the woman on the desk patiently inquired as to whether I was in each of the exempted categories before charging me the fee I already knew I would have to pay. The accompanying book "Our Urban Future" - 978-1-906886-57-8 - sits in front of me as I type (I was savvy enough to save money on that by getting it online afterwards).










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