"Mamma Mia: The Party" coming to Coin Street?

Got a leaflet through door for a proposal for a temporary venue for a "brand new event conceived and produced by Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA" for that gap site beside the Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre.

Not sure it's going to go down a storm with local residents if it's anything like this:

https://www.mammamiatheparty.com/se/en/

Holding site here: http://mmtplondon.com/, with more info being released on June 2.

That would do my swede in

Here's a petition to ask the Mamma Mia The Party (MMTP) developers to choose another site https://www.change.org/p/leader-lambeth-council but more importantly, we need people to formally place an objection to this proposal on Lambeth council's planning portal. It won't take long and the website people won't bombard you with junk emails. Here's how to do it: https://www.change.org/p/leader-lambeth-council/u/21681220 Please do it now as planning permission is to be determiined on 7th November!

This isn't about dissing Abba - it's all about using a long-term vacant site for community housing as has always been intended. Instead, landowners Coin Street Community Builders (CSCB), stand to profit from having MMTP there as they need to fund Doon Street Tower, a 43 storey skyscraper of luxury apartments (not cooperative/social housing). And another thing! MMTP would be in completely the wrong location i.e. slap bang in the heart of a residential area. The noise, pedicabs, coaches, litter, last minute pee stops on your porches and 500-1000 revellers every night is enough to make you shout S.O.S.!

CSCB have form on trying exploit public land which was left to the community by the GLC in the 80s (ahem - Garden Bridge) so it's really important to ACT NOW before the site is lost to the community forever.

qwerty wrote:

And another thing! MMTP would be in completely the wrong location i.e. slap bang in the heart of a residential area. The noise, pedicabs, coaches, litter, last minute pee stops on your porches and 500-1000 revellers every night is enough to make you shout S.O.S.!

You live in central London, you have expect noise of some sort? I live on OKR, constant sirens and drunks shouting. You get use to it after a while.

The permanent use of this site is phase 2 of our neighbourhood centre (the Mamma Mia! The Party proposal is for temporary use). In fact this site has never been earmarked or received consent for housing.

We are proud to have built 220 award-winning co-operative homes and would love to build more. We are currently discussing creating intermediate co-operative housing for rent within our Doon Street scheme. This is our aspiration and we are investigating the viability.

We are a social enterprise. The rent paid by MMTP for the use of the site will contribute to the costs of maintaining Bernie Spain Garden and the riverside walkway, and to provide community activities including family support for vulnerable and challenged families in Lambeth and Southwark, our children’s nursery which acts as an enhanced provider for children with special educational needs, and our wide ranging community programmes including free activities and events and learning, employment and training support for local people.

We know visitor management is key for local residents, particularly around guests arriving and leaving the proposed MMTP venue. This is a priority for us and the MMTP team and we are committed to ensuring an appropriate operational management regime is in place.

You’ll find further details on our website http://coinstreet.org/mamma-mia-the-party/

Louise King, Coin Street Community Bu wrote:

The permanent use of this site is phase 2 of our neighbourhood centre (the Mamma Mia! The Party proposal is for temporary use). In fact this site has never been earmarked or received consent for housing.
We are proud to have built 220 award-winning co-operative homes and would love to build more. We are currently discussing creating intermediate co-operative housing for rent within our Doon Street scheme. This is our aspiration and we are investigating the viability.

We are a social enterprise. The rent paid by MMTP for the use of the site will contribute to the costs of maintaining Bernie Spain Garden and the riverside walkway, and to provide community activities including family support for vulnerable and challenged families in Lambeth and Southwark, our children’s nursery which acts as an enhanced provider for children with special educational needs, and our wide ranging community programmes including free activities and events and learning, employment and training support for local people.

We know visitor management is key for local residents, particularly around guests arriving and leaving the proposed MMTP venue. This is a priority for us and the MMTP team and we are committed to ensuring an appropriate operational management regime is in place.

You’ll find further details on our website http://coinstreet.org/mamma-mia-the-party/

That's all very well, but is Angelo doing the electrics?

Louise: there has never been a 'phase two' of the neighbourhood centre until the controversy surrounding the empty site came to light. Please provide evidence to support this claim of phase two being in the original plans? Otherwise it seems as if you're making it up as you go along, just as you are now saying that affordable housing 'may' be included in Doon St Tower even though it was never part of the plan for DST until CSCB were shamed into saying something - anything - publicly to ameliorate the situation. Funnily enough, this u-turn came after CSCB privately stated to ITV earlier this year, that you/it was no longer interested in building cooperative housing and CSCB had just taken a public dressing down after the Garden Bridge fiasco (CSCB refused to accommodate ITV's request to fulfil its obligation in providing affordable housing with regards to its restructure and redevelopment). The fact remains, you are only "discussing" the possibilty - not actually factoring it into your plans. This is unconvincing. Meanwhile there are detailed plans drawn up aound 1986 that prove that 4 storey housing was always meant on this site. https://www.change.org/p/leader-lambeth-council/u/21681220

Your priority is to the community you serve not to ensure good 'visitor management' for an unwanted scheme that was never put to the local community until after it was a done deal with the developers. Your priority is to listen to the community who overwhelmingly do not want Mamma Mia The Party on their doorstep especially when cooperative/social housing is in such desperate need. You obligation was/is to consult with the local community about all such proposals as per your constitution, but in what is becoming typical CSCB behaviour, MMTP was decided behind closed doors and presented to us all as a fait accompli.

In the meantime, where have you spent all the money from rents from all the pop-up events on the Queen's Walk, the rent from Havery Nicks restaurant at the OXO Tower, the rents from the outlets in the OXO Tower, the rents from Nandos, the underground car park, the overground car park, the rentable space on Doon St, the rent from the Green Room, the rent from the cooperative residents themselevs which are already close to private market rental rates, the rent from Gabriel's Wharf, the rent from Rambert - oh, sorry, they don't pay rent do they? And then there's the money from hiring out the neighbourhood cente and the Columbo Centre, riverwalk, outdoor spaces, filming opportunities - the list goes on. CSCB don't seem to be short a bob or two, so it's disingenuous of you to claim that you need MMTP to pay off the relatively small costs of upkeeping the 'public realm'. All the good will from the free activities that you mention is lost when you compare it to all the money CSCB makes and yet CSCB constantly proclaims its in penury - but we don't know if you're being straight with us because you are an unelected and unaccountable body with no AGM - no openness or transparency. Unless you fancy opening up your books for public scrutiny?

Louise King, Coin Street Community Bu wrote:

In fact this site has never been earmarked or received consent for housing.

The CSCB Neighbourhood Centre was part built on the adjoining site which was specifically designated for housing. This site gives CSCB the opportunity to give it back. Anyway, the site is in an area specifically designated as residential in Lambeth's Waterloo Supplementary Planning Documents.

Louise King, Coin Street Community Bu wrote:

We are proud to have built 220 award-winning co-operative homes

Yes excellent. However, CSCB were meant to finish the development within 10 years. 33 years later CSCB still haven't built anywhere near the number of homes they originally agreed to.

Louise King, Coin Street Community Bu wrote:

The rent paid by MMTP for the use of the site will contribute to the costs of maintaining ...

CSCB give land for free to Ballet Rambert, a rich company, and then plead they must put a nightclub right next to our homes to maintain Bernie Spain etc. Laughable.

How can CSCB be broke? CSCB were given so much land. CSCB have so many businesses paying handsome rents. As the GB FOI reveal CSCB make £600,000 per year just from the grass behind ITV. How can CSCB be so broke they want to place a nightclub next to our homes?

Louise King, Coin Street Community Bu wrote:

We know visitor management is key for local residents

The 500+ punters are encouraged to drink, sing and dance. It's a big party night out. The MMTP staff cannot mitigate anti-social behaviour on the street where they have no authority. We will be woken every night by happy party goers singing the same few Abba hooks.

Lots of residents and residential groups are getting together to oppose this. Including most of the local co-ops. Soon to be all. Hopefully. Even Iroko, who were offered a bribe, have passed a motion opposing this joke of a proposal. They put the community before their immediate self interest.

More info available here: https://waterloose1.wordpress.com/

Please object to the planning application. How to object here: https://waterloose1.wordpress.com/planning-application-notes/

Dear Louise

Louise King, Coin St wrote:

"The permanent use of this site is phase 2 of our neighbourhood centre (the Mamma Mia! The Party proposal is for temporary use)."

Question: is Coin Street's massive 4-storey Neighbourhood Centre already the biggest in the UK per resident it serves? (you serve 220 households). Does it need a "phase 2"?

Louise King, Coin St wrote:

"In fact this site has never been earmarked or received consent for housing."

Question: didn't Coin St acquire this site along with a dozen others for peanuts TO BUILD SOCIAL RENT HOUSING?
Question: haven't you 'moved things around' since your original acquisition in 1986, building non-housing on sites earmarked for housing, such as at Doon St, which was your largest housing site but in fact accommodates a ballet school and a posh commercial restaurant??

Louise King, Coin St wrote:

"We are proud to have built 220 award-winning co-operative homes and would love to build more."

Question: well then, why don't you? You haven't built any housing since 2002. You have sites vacant for decades (including the Mamma Mia site) which could have had housing on. You were supposed ro build homes for 1,300 residents, but you haven't built half of that in over 30 years. In 2007 you reported your next venture was sheltered housing on Gabriel's Wharf, and this summer -a decade later - you repeated the same claim. What has happened in the intervening decade?

Louise King, Coin St wrote:

We are a social enterprise. The rent paid by MMTP for the use of the site will contribute to the costs of maintaining Bernie Spain Garden and the riverside walkway, and to provide community activities etc.

Question: how much rent do you get in from all the commercial activities you run? We know you get £600k a year renting out the piece of grass in front of ITV where the Garden Bridge would have landed. Similar rents across your vacant sites must haul in several million pounds per year, along with rents from Gabriel's Wharf, Oxo tower, NCP car parks, hiring out of the Neighbourhood Centre etc
Question: why don't you open your books to public scrutiny? why don't you properly report your accounts or any of your activities to the local community, or even your own tenants, or ever hold an AGM, or publish an annual report, or manage any accountability whatsoever to anyone?
Question: how many people does Coin St employ? And at what rates? There is Iain Tuckett, Group Director, and Alison Pinner, Deputy Group Director, and you, Director of Communication & Information, and David Hopkins, Director of Community, and then you have a Director of the Children's Centre Trust, and a Head of Property and Facilities and a Contracts Perfomance Manager and the Head of Training & Support and the Conference Centre Team and Head of Snouts in the Trough... Do you actually employ more people than are housed on your estate?
Question: are you thoroughly ashamed of yourselves, or are you laughing all the way to the bank?

Most recent set of full accounts, to end of March 2016, are here:

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/01783483/filing-history