Residents at Comer brothers’ London tower blocks worry following demolition order

This week, Nick, a resident of Mast Quay residential high-rise scheme in east London, was exercising in a gym that was never meant to be there.

Galway brothers Brian and Luke Comer, who built Mast Quay’s second phase of 204 apartments on the bank of the river Thames, were last month ordered by the local authority to tear down its two tower blocks, including one 23 storeys high. Among the 26 planning breaches cited by officials was the gym had no permission and was inaccessible to the disabled.

Residents continued to use it during the week as the planning row raged. On the noticeboard outside the gym, a note was posted from the developers attempting to reassure them that everything would be okay.

Other planning deviations cited by officials included the cladding, “bulk” of the buildings and “lower quality” residential accommodation.

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“The development that was given planning permission is not the one that we can see before us today,” said Royal Borough of Greenwich Council. It said the balconies are too small and there is no garden, as promised.

In the meantime, the Comers continue to rent out the apartments to new tenants, despite the demolition order. Any new arrivals will join Nick, who asked that his surname not be used, among hundreds of Mast Quay phase two residents whose homes are under threat. More than half of the 204 flats are already occupied.

Several existing residents who spoke to The Irish Times this week say they feel like pawns caught up in a growing row between Comer Homes, owned by the wealthy Irish developers, and the council.

“We just want to get on with life,” said Nick, stepping off a running machine in the gym at the base of Moon Sail House, one of the towers under threat.

“We had no inkling there were planning issues when we moved in. Yet we are caught in the middle. We feel like we have been bulls***ted by everybody. Others must have known problems were coming. We were told nothing.”

Comer Homes insisted the council’s order to demolish Mast Quay’s phase two came out of the blue, while the council said it had been outlining its concerns to the Irish developers for up to a year.

Mast Quay sits on the river bank in Woolwich, east of the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and directly across the river from London City Airport. It is an old docklands area in need of urban renewal, beside the Woolwich Ferry service that shuttles cars across the river.

A five-minute walk away is Woolwich’s retail district, with well-known high street shops but also a preponderance of pawnbrokers and charity shops. Two huge evangelical churches sit directly across the road from Mast Quay.

The three blocks of Mast Quay’s first phase, which are not under threat of demolition, were finished in 2007 by the original developer, who then went bust. Comer Homes subsequently bought the site and the permission for phase two, starting work in 2015 and finishing it last year.

Brian and Luke Comer were Galway plasterers who made their fortunes in the building trade in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. Their wealth is estimated at more than €1 billion and at the height of the Celtic Tiger they were linked with a consortium that explored a bid for Aston Villa football club.

Sports is a big theme for the brothers: Luke Comer is also a keen horse trainer, although earlier this year he was told by regulators he would be banned for three years after his horses were found to have traces of steroids.

After the last big crash, the Comer brothers invested heavily in the then-moribund Irish commercial property scene, making more money on its rebound. These days, they are building further huge residential schemes all across England, including several around London and another in Portland, Dorset, in the shadow of the notorious HMP Verne prison.

As Nick completed his workout this week in the gym on one side of Mast Quay’s new plaza, across the other side the Hamptons estate agents hired by the Comers to fill their build-to-rent development continued to take prospective tenants upstairs for viewings.

“That’s one of the estate agents there,” said Nick, nodding towards a young woman who was entering the main door at the base of the 23-storey Main Sale house.

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She was accompanied by a man in a grey hoodie. Twenty minutes later, she re-entered the Hamptons office with the same man, and could be heard taking him through the price list. Higher-up flats will cost more, she told the prospective tenant. A two-bedroomed, two-bathroom unit in the Sky Sail building would cost £2,329 (€2,692) per month furnished, or £100 per month cheaper for an unfurnished flat, she said. A high-rise two-bed in Main Sale house would cost £2,400 per month unfurnished.

This week, a spokesman for the Irish developers defended the decision to keep renting flats out to new tenants even as the threat of demolition hangs over the development. Comer Homes says it will appeal and this could take over a year to process. In the meantime, it says, it needs to fill the towers to pay for the project, which the Irish developers funded through a £36 million loan from Investec.

“There is no immediate requirement to cease new tenancies or to remove high-quality, affordable housing stock from the local market,” said the Comer Homes spokesman.

“All the residents had a Teams meeting with the council on Monday and they told us that if Comer appeals, it could even be more than two years until we have to move out,” said another resident. “But it is still a shocking thing to be told that your home could be demolished. You just assume that something is never going to happen to you.”

The company said this week it has sought a meeting with the council to address the planning issues that led to the demolition order, but it has yet to hear back on a date. If it cannot get the order rescinded, it says, it will appeal by the end of October, which will lead to a judicial review.

That would represent a big gamble for the developer brothers. At an estimated cost of £150 million to demolish and rebuild the development, it is one they will want to win.