Renaisi has been commissioned to work on the St Paul’s Way Transformational Project. This innovative partnership of London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Poplar Harca, and Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust aims to transform both the physical and social environments for the residents and working population of this street in Tower Hamlets.
Renaisi’s role will be to provide support to the policy group who are managing the partnership, as well as evaluating the effectiveness of the current group’s structure to enable the project to run more efficiently. We have also been asked to deliver communications support for the project as a whole.
St Paul’s Way runs through the heart of Poplar, in the midst of Europe’s largest regeneration area, encompassing Canary Wharf, the Royal Docks, Stratford City and the site of the London 2012 Olympics. Along St Paul’s Way, within a few hundred yards of each other, are two housing estates, a secondary school, a GP practice, a primary school, a retail parade and several community facilities. Yet, far from bringing communities together, St Paul’s Way acts as a car-dominated boundary between the residential communities on either side of it.
The St Paul’s Way Transitional Project was initiated because a series of significant developments were planned along the street, but they were being developed in isolation to each other. The St Paul’s Way Partnership was created bring these developments together and pursue a coordinated vision for the future of the area. This provided a unique and exciting opportunity to deliver a legacy of sustainable regeneration.
The partnership aims to create a place where people want to live, work, visit and play. There are already committed proposals for massive investment in local facilities and provision of 1500 new homes. These proposed projects include:
- St. Paul’s Way Community School- a new building for 1300 pupils
- Leopold Estate Regeneration – providing new and refurbished homes
- Cafe Reconnect and Community Centre – a brand new building
- A new Medical Centre catering for 11,000 patients
- Improvements to Furze Green
- New developments on the Limehouse Cut
- A new artist’s community
The overall aim is not only to transform the physical environment along St Paul’s Way in Tower Hamlets and to coordinate the various planned developments, but also to transform relationships between fragmented local communities.
