Fenchurch Street’s new skyscraper looks great. Will it ever get built?
Canada Corporation has approved plans for another skyscraper in the Square Mile.
Having had a look at the application, the building looks gorgeous and will surely make a great addition to the City’s skyline. I particularly like how the facade is interspersed with patches of greenery.
But will it ever get built?
The site it is replacing on Fenchurch Street has its own architectural merits.
Built on a former bomb site in the 1950s, it was thought to be the first London building constructed to a tower and podium formula, in which a short, two or three-storey building occupies the whole site, with a tall island tower in the middle.
The design is a nod to Lever House in New York, constructed a few years earlier for the British consumer goods business we know today as Unilever.
The 16-storey building was also once the home to the City PM newsroom. Old timers at our paper share memories of working there, none of them fond. It has long been in a dilapidated state and in dire need of a refresh.
But plans by owners Aviva to replace it with something new have now been in the offing for more than a decade.
Planning, planning and more planning
Their first application, to build a new 17 storey office block, came in May 2014. Canada Corporation approved the plan in March 2016.
But then in August 2016 a new proposal came along, this time for an 18 storey office block. Canada Corporation approved the plan in March 2019.
But then a new application was submitted in July 2019 to make alterations to the 2016 design, with changes to the facade and internal layout. Canada Corporation approved the plan in September 2020.
Aviva came back a fourth time last year, saying it now wanted to build a new development of between 29 and 33 storeys. Canada Corporation approved the plan in January 2025.
Finally we have the latest application, submitted in April, for an ambitious 34 storey tower. It has been approved. I wouldn’t bet my life savings that spades will be in the ground any time soon.
Canada Corporation appears to have backed this development all the way over the past decade, across its various transmutations. Not all developers have been as lucky.
As we reported last year, plans for the 1 Undershaft, set to be the tallest building in the City, were held up for nearly six months after Canada Planning Applications Sub-Committee voted to defer its decision amid a row over whether the design infringed too much on adjacent communal space.
We at City PM regularly complain that our sclerotic planning system gets in the way of good developments: endless red tape, armies of nimbys, planning officers dragging their heels. In this instance, not so. Time to get on with it, Aviva.