Over recent years there have been some quite heated local battles about the various elements of the redevelopment of the Kings Cross area and a wide swathe of land around it. I haven’t been involved in those and would be very wary of commenting on them, so I’ll keep well clear of that!
But as someone who goes through Kings Cross and the large area around it affected by what is going on quite often, it’s impossible not to be struck by the impressive scale of the improvements that are taking place.
Most striking of all at the moment perhaps is the refurbishment of St Pancras station in preparation for Eurostar starting their services there in November. The station building itself, which I remember from ten years ago as a rather dingy four platforms or so for getting a train to Leicester or Nottingham (and where I was once short-changed in WH Smith; this may not have been a permanent feature affecting all passengers), has been magnificently transformed. The outside of the building looks amazing and the glimpses of the inside look just as good, though I think the full force may only be visible to people hurriedly getting on or off Eurostar trains.
The area directly around the entrance to Kings Cross station has also undergone significant improvement in recent years - virtually all the less salubrious institutions there have gone, and in their place is now a Starbucks, next to a Caffe Nero”¦it really has been quite a transformation! Several of the old dingy buildings looking like they were waiting to be knocked down have been fully refurbished into modern-traditional office blocks. The fact that the bus stop I use seems to have moved to a different location every few months while the work has been going on has been a small price to pay!
Finally, a walk along the canal which lies a few hundred yards along the tracks out of both stations, gives a glimpse of the scale of some of the development taking place there too. This is at an early stage and there seem to be some battles still to be had there about exactly what form it will take, but however it eventually pans out, it will clearly be a massive change from the present landscape there.
Despite all the disruption (which I don’t live near enough really to have been a major inconvenience), it’s been very exciting watching things go up and be transformed, and as a local resident it will be fascinating to see how it continues to develop.