Sydenham Town Forum

I am going to make one of my rare forays onto the site but am moved to do so as a close neighbour of the Zanzibar night club who sadly regularly suffers from the anti social behaviour of its patrons. Sydenham needs to be a thriving place to live, work and play. However this means encouraging busines...

Going over old ground indeed! Round and round in circles and no nearer an answer. All we have is not only not only an eyesore of a ruined pub but two unused and boarded up retail units. I will repeat that I see no prospect of the Greyhound ever being completed so the site will never be occupied. And...

There is a wonderful obsession with 'good quality ales' making all the difference to the profitability of pubs. Whilst this is clearly the case for food, I am afraid good beer (which I do drink where possible) does not make the difference as sadly most people to many people still like mass produced ...

Like most I really fail to understand the total failure of the Council to co-ordinate the works on Sydenham Road. The same department runs both the lighting and the road/paving contract and they could so easily have been phased to make this work. We will be told that it will make no difference the e...

Eagle I thought the whole point about this market an the other initiatives around the improvements to the high street etc was to boost the profile of the area. Surely the market does this and whether the traders we local it made Sydenham a more lively and better place to be on a Sunday morning and a...

I have not posted on this thread or indeed the whole site for a couple of weeks because like gillyjp I was getting a bit bored. Also I was getting rather annoyed that because I dared to challenge the quasi religious orthodoxy of many contributors it was all getting a bit personal. But anyway time to...

I am not sure that people understand that the granting of planning permission means that anything will actually be built. The decision as to whether to build out a scheme is purely a commercial one i.e. will the developer make a profit? I am afraid I can see no prospect that Purelake will make any m...

It is time to think a bit differently and there seems to be a bit of a consensus forming. The Greyhound will not be rebuilt. The developer has no financial incentive to do so, indeed they will make a loss if they did. The reality is also that the Council does not have the appetite, money or power to...

Not sure I agree about the Highways man. He seemed to want to blame TFL for all the problems with the huge congestion that has happened as a consequence of the works. Still I live in hope that the traffic chaos will be resolved once TFL and the Council get their act together.

I doubt very much if the building will stay standing if they take the scaffolding down so not sure we will ever see the mural. And as I said at the Sydenham Assembly last night (with agreement from an unlikely ally) I doubt if the pub will ever reopen so the mural will be on a ruin. Rather we need t...

All the evidence shows that there are simply to many pubs and that those that will close will be the bad ones. Surely it is better to close badly run uneconomic pubs in order to ensure that well run good ones stay open. There are good pubs to suit all tastes in the area many of which are excellent, ...

Oh dear, what a mess. If the Windmill is to become a Sainsbury's will there be a huge campaign to keep it as a pub like we have had for the Two Halves or because it is up Kirkale doesn't it matter? And we have a ruin at the site of the Greyhound when we could have, as Gillyjp has said, a high qualit...

A louvre panel is the cover to the plant machinery for the air con units. These as you will see from the plans be right opposite the bedrooms of the properties in Peak Hill Gardens and under the windows of the bedrooms to the new flats. A great moving in present and in my view unacceptable. This was...

The scaffolding all appears to be down and certainly at the back they are putting up a semi permanent fence by the looks at it.

Further to my previous post I was somewhat alarmed that they have taken down most of the scaffolding from the building. Given you can't mend the gutters on a building that high without scaffolding for health and safety reasons, they certainly will not be able to rebuild all the brickwork and put on ...

Actually they did quite a lot of work on it today. Builders always take a couple of weeks off during August so will all be back on track now I think.

Oh dear Pat, I fear you miss out a stage. Yes the Sydenham Society objected to the demolition of the Greyhound building. But between that time and the existing plans I am sorry but did you did work in partnership with developers and I suggest you look at your own website entry of 1 November 2008. I ...

Sorry but I like the plans and wonder what the fuss is about. Let us look at this dispassionately. 1. In design terms I think that the conservatory enhances the building, echoing what was originally there. In any case I am sorry that given the modern building around the site that hardly enhances the...

Yet another planning application put in for the site (must be at least 20). This time to make the basement part of the pub/restaurant, and 2 maisonettes on the first floor and a mezanine. Where will it end?

So when does a restoration become a fake. There is no roof, no internal walls or ceilings, most of the windows are gone as has the whole of the back wall along with I think most of the external woodwork. How much of the original building that was supposed to have been saved is left is therefore some...