Copeland Cultural Quarter
Site 63P/71P, was identified by Southwark Council as the location for a possible 'split-site' tram depot. Now (2008-9) that decision has been reversed by Transport for London (TfL), and the blight has been lifted. Half of that site, the part between Rye Lane and Copeland Road, was wrongly said to be derelict leading to the decision in 2004 to locate the tram depot there. The Peckham Vision campaign successfully got across the message that the site was already a showing its potential to be a thriving mixed area of artists' studios, art galleries, a variety of small businesses, retail and creative industry, housing and other community uses, and has the emerging feel of a Cultural Quarter. A major part of the land is owned and operated by Copeland Industrial Park (CIP), and so the area and its immediate surrounds is becoming known as the Copeland Cultural Quarter (CCQ). See article Emerging Copeland Cultural Quarter.
See here for a satellite view of the Copeland Cultural Quarter, showing its location, and here for a street plan showing its links with the Peckham Rye station area, which is also emerging as a cultural quarter. See here for the way this has all developed up to mid 2014 demonstrating the great potential this area, around the station, really had for the creative and cultural industries.
The draft masterplan here illustrates the concept of a mixed organic development with the gradual rehabilitation of historic buildings integrated with new build, creating linked squares and courtyards, and the Copeland Cultural Quarter providing a comfortable transition between the town centre in the west and housing to the east.
This plan complements the similar vision for Peckham Rye Station and its adjacent environment behind and in front, which Southwark Council are developing following the agreement to explore opening up the piazza in front of the station see here.
These ideas about the development of the Copeland Cultural Quarter illustrate an answer to the questions posed in the Council's draft PAAP Issues and Options paper (page 39) about what other uses there are for this site as an alternative to demolishing it for a possible tram depot. This use is already taking place naturally in commercial market conditions. It can therefore continue to develop organically, preceding, and encouraging, in some aspects the developments envisaged in the transformation of the station and the creation of the public piazza, provided the blight from the tram depot designation could be lifted. The Copeland Cultural Quarter has a strategic role as an integral part of the transforming development of this central part of Peckham town centre. This can be seen by its specific location - across the road from the station, and adjoining the railway line on the east of Rye Lane - and its very large scale in the central area of development sites in the heart of the Rye Lane area - see development site no 2 in the Council's PAAP map.
Plans
