I am employed half time by the Custom House and Canning Town Community Renewal Project to help ensure the success of a project to convert St. Luke's church so as to provide a health centre, community rooms, office and training space.
‘St Luke's church, consecrated in 1875, is a large and distinguished building designed by Giles & Gane. Today it is virtually the only pre-war building in a tightly-knit docklands community which suffered badly in the Blitz. Its survival of the bombing, and the social work of a much loved incumbent in the 1950s and 60s helped define its importance to local people. But in 1985 the congregation moved to a shared-use building on the nearby housing estate, and the church was declared redundant. A campaign to save it was swiftly put into action.
The campaign which was organised, and the events around it, reflect the depth of the community's feelings about the church and its determination to transfer it into a resource for local people. It is significant that this degree of commitment is not rooted in a self-confident and prosperous parish, but in one of the poorest working class communities in one of London's poorest boroughs.’
The church is now a grade 2 listed building. It has some outstanding mosaics which are being restored.
It's one thing to campaign against something it is quite another to come up with creative solutions. The community both fought to save the building and created the vision that would secure its future.
Custom House and Canning Town Community Renewal Project is a registered charity and development trust. It is owned and controlled by local residents. The charity's Chair is Vera Cohen and it's Company Secretary is John McNeil who is also the development worker. John and I work closely together trying to keep all the balls in the air.
The first breakthrough in getting the refurbishment of St Luke's underway was the decision of the Church Commissioners to give the church to the charity. Following this decision we prepared a bid to the European Regional Development Fund that outlined how the building would be developed so as to create community enterprise, jobs and office space. The Borough agreed to front the bid and cashflow the works. The bid was succesful.
Another key factor was the decision of the Health Authority to rent space for a health centre. The rents from letting this space underpins the long term financial viability of the scheme as a whole.
The ground floor of the church will contain community rooms that could seat up to 300, the surgeries and cafe. It will also give access to the beautiful apse and mosaics which will be a unique feature in the finished building. The first floor will have more space for health related occupants and community offices. The second floor will have training space and the third and fourth floors will have office space.
The scheme will cost around £2 million. The main funding is from the european Regional Development Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund. Other significant funders include the Canning Town SRB the FHSA and English Heritage.
Our funding has always been difficult as the ERDF funds have nothing to do with saving a heritage building and similarly heritage funding bodies are not overly interested in job creation. The skill has been to marry these diverse interests in order to secure the future of the building as a whole.
We expect the building to be ready to move into from June '97. There will still be works going on but all the main building work will have been completed. We are currently looking for tenants - the building is themed around health and caring activities so any organisation or business that fits into this category is particularly welcome. We are also looking for Net and media related tenants as the building has been designed to include 100M ethernet throughout and high speed internet connectivity will be provided. Space circa £10.50/sqft including service charge.