A year ago the London Development Agency (LDA) held a consultation in the Park to collect thousands of opinions on how Crystal Palace Park should be regenerated when the LDA takeover the National Sports Centre in 2006 and, subject to final agreement, the whole Park in 2009.

Now they are back with the results and the proposals they are putting to Bromley Council for outline planning permission. Their 'Tent in the Park' is attracting huge interest and some concern. The Crystal Palace Community Association went so far as to pitch a rival gazebo right outside to ensure no visitor could miss their objections to the proposals.

So what is it all about?

The Park was originally run by the Greater London Council (GLC) until its dissolution under Margaret Thatcher. It was handed over to Bromley - the Park is within their borders but almost completely surrounded by Croydon, Lambeth, Southwark & Lewisham. It is expensive to run and as it didn't explicitly serve Bromley (only their north west outpost of Penge) it was neglected and went downhill. An attempt to privatise the popular Sunday Night Promenades ended in disaster and the users of this major South London resource felt unloved.

An intrusion into the Park was the building in the 1960s of the National Sports Centre. Its remarkable brutalist concrete architecture has earned it a grade 2* listing but not many friends.

The sports facilities are now well past their sell-by date. Refurbishment was of the same magnitude of cost as demolition and rebuilding. It would have closed in 2004 had not the LDA come onto the scene. The LDA has to decide what to do with NSC and, if they take it over in 2009, the Park as a whole.

The LDA is due to submit their outline planning proposals to Bromley Council this Autumn and the exhibition reveals what those plans are.

A lot of it is good - which almost everybody agreed on at the last consultation. The key proposal is to demolish the NSC and the elevated central walkway. The Centre will be consolidated and re-built on the site of the current stadium. This will include (after some strong discussion) a 50m Olympic Pool. This makes easy access from the station and concentrates the parking around it.

The real benefit is that the current swimming/sports hall area reverts to parkland and re-unites the two halves of the Park.

The downside is that this, and other improvements, have to be paid for. The LDA is proposing development (mostly residential) in pockets of land. This could contribute £5m to £20 million one-time benefit to the Park.

This is not totally unexpected. Some of the proposals are very unexpected. Already organisations such as the CPCA are 'up in arms' over any selling off of our Park. With the history of the Multiplex Cinema fiasco still etched deep in people's memories - the consultation was supposed to ensure everybody was on board with the re-generation of the Park.

Will there be a consensus? Judge for yourself. We are going to concentrate on the redevelopment issues as you will be able to see the proposal in full either at the exhibition or on the LDA website.

The plan shows the proposed new layout - the new Sports Centre is centre bottom - with a new greened centre to the Park. The three arrows indicate the three major residential development proposals.

Top left is the current site of the Rockhills Caravan Park off the roundabouts at the top of Westwood Hill. There is no proper entrance here and it is a very unattractive environment. The LDA propose to return some of the area to public parkland and create a major new entrance. You can also see that this would include a major amount of building. This is a difficult one. If you believe selling off parkland is always bad in creating a precedent for financing a gradually decreasing public facility this would be unacceptable. Especially as it could never be returned to Park. On the otherhand it does bring back and make accessible a neglected part of the Park. If you can't have one without the other - what do you decide?

We will now turn to the Sydenham Gate entrance (top right arrow). The LDA are planning to infill the spaces between the existing villas on Crystal Palace Park Road with more. This includes demolishing the brand new maintenence centre.

But look closely at the Gate itself. You can see an apparently small innocuous rectangle. Now look at the artist's impression of this below:

You see an apparent four storey building to the right of the entrance on the site of the Ranger's cottage. Except if you know the site you realise that it is on a steep slope towards the entrance so if it is four storey at the top it would have to be 5 or 6 storey at the bottom. The tree conveniently hides this detail. You will notice the arrow - this is because the impression shows a small pavillion for the cricket pitch. Whereas the plan (below) shows a much larger Pavillion nearer the entrance and obscuring the views over the Park.

The plan transforms what used to be a very pretty and low scale entrance (before the car park was added recently) into an alleyway surrounded entirely by buildings and concrete (albeit with trees planted to keep the cars cool). It may also change the junction into a major cross-road for vehicular access to the Pavillion, Block & Car Park.

This would be a major removal of Park facilities for people in the Lawrie Park area. Of great concern to us is that Nigel Westaway in his brief to the people of Sydenham only a couple of months ago - gave no indication that this development was being considered here. His name is attached to the artistic impressions in the exhibition - he must have been aware of this. This does bring into question the openess and transparency of the consultation process.

We are reaching a crucial point in the regenerating process. The LDA needs to keep as many people on board as possible. We all want a better Park. Will actions like this lose the confidence of people who look closely into the proposals. How do they plan to win us back?

Where do we go from here? ... Will the Sydenham Society take up this issue on behalf of us all - the Sydenham Gate proposal is bigger than their Sydenham Gateway plan. The latter fitted well into the urban environment around Sydenham Station. Do we want something bigger in our Park?

Comment here....

This would be the view to the rear of the Pavilion with the new block replacing the cottage and almost filling the top left of the picture

Further reading:

• LDA Sydenham July 2005 consultation <here>
• LDA's report on the September 2004 consultation <here>
• Sydenham Town's Seotember 2004 report <here>
• A walk around the Park <here>
• LDA's Crystal Palace Park Website <here>
• Crystal Palace Community Association Website <here>

Sydenham Gate - block to the right, car park to the left, pavillion straight ahead?