> Chris Hayward, policy chairman of the City of London Corporation, said the > decision represented a "positive new chapter" for the markets as it "empowers > traders to build a sustainable future in premises that align with their > long-term business goals".
This is a great statement. Like firing people to free them up to find jobs that better align with their desire for employment.
> "Positive new chapter" = "We're closing this place down".
> "Empower traders" = "Kick them out".
> "Sustainable future" = "Nowhere to go".
> "Financial support and guidance" = "Good luck, you're on your own".
> "Unlock the huge potential" = "We'll figure something out, maybe".
tldr from bsremover too:
Smithfield: Big meat market, been there since 1860s. Billingsgate: Huge fish market, been there since 1327, now moving to make way for homes.
So a real state take over, pretty much?
Write your MP.
But the English of late are exceptionally good at bending over and showing their rear-ends to new foreign overlords for paltry sums of coin.
Sociopath, well. The world is cruel, including for children.
Gotta hit those eco numbers.
A healthy economy is one where money, people, skills, and intellectual property has high velocity, meaning people quickly reorient their productive capacity to where it's most useful.
Well, this would all be true if the UK wasn't going through a lost generation economically. Serves them right for Brexit!
Everyone is an interchangeable cog!
> Serves them right for Brexit!
Brexit wasn’t a unanimous vote. There are people suffering under the Brexit decision that couldn’t vote at the time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model
Not everything from the past is good. We don’t still run coal power plants in London just to get that historic smog.
They were already planning to move both markets way out of central London (to a place no-one but a local would ever go) this is just changing it to not providing a new site.
Just because most Londoners don't care doesn't make them unimportant. They can provide a useful 'infrastructure' role for allowing this specific sector to run more smoothly.
There's a similar thing in Toronto, the Ontario Food Terminal, that allows various local businesses (restaurants, local grocers / veg stands, (neighbourhood) florists, etc) buy directly from producers without having to go through a middle-man:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Food_Terminal
There was some worry that the facility would be retired and the land (e.g.) used for housing, but there are no plans to get rid of or relocate it:
* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-food-terminal...
* https://farmtario.com/news/ontario-food-terminal-distributes...
Given that Toronto is the largest city in Canada, it allows for a somewhat convenient location for producers to sell to a large amount of buyers in a concentrated space.
> […] and require major financial support.
Running a modern society requires major financial support. The question is: what are the benefits to society of the infrastructure in question? Are the vendors not charged rent? Are the buyers perhaps not charged a membership fee? At least when it comes to OpEx do annual fees not cover expenses? The above mentioned Ontario Food Terminal is self-sufficient from fees (perhaps the government helps out every so often with CapEx?).
Aside from Michelin star places chefs don't go around buying anything the whole ordering is highly automated.
Subsets of culture are preserved, packetized & traded daily. Even StubHub has a "food festival" category.
> The Corporation will now have to file a Private Bill in Parliament as it seeks to absolve itself of the legal responsibility of running the markets.
The Corporation in this case is the Corporation of the City of London, which is the local government authority for the City of London, which is only the part of London that is within the walls of Roman Londinium. The Parliamentary Bill may very well not pass, in which case the Corporation may be in something of a pickle.
Also known as the most efficient and high volume money laundering machine ever devised by man. Do a deep dive into russian oligarch money and the City of London, from reputable journalism sources, and you won't like what you find.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/28/how-putins-oli...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/14/nearly...
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/02/04/...
British papers tend to mix up City of London as in the old city and city of London as in the general financial services including Canary Wharf etc. Bit like how 'Wall Street' doesn't always mean that exact street.
I think it's highly unlikely that it would fail.
> The Parliamentary Bill may very well not pass, in which case the Corporation may be in something of a pickled herring.
I note the haughty remarks of other commenters who are neither familiar with the area or the ability to read, and suggest they pay a virtual visit to the spots in question
It's a lovely area, and home to one of my favourite restaurants, St Johns.
Bourdain was a great pal and admirer, describing him as 'the most influential chef of the last two decades'
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/17/st-john...
Either are cool, although I like the image of you running through the actual market like Rocky Balboa in the meat locker or something
It's prime real estate land, possibly the best plot in London right now. And so is Smithfield, or at least the land that Museum of London is on, and they're moving to Smithfield. For a while I expect.
The whole thing is just short term profiteering over tradition and a rich history. Some things need preserving.
Mostly because modern cities only allow the most boring, safe things to be built. Less people would be whining if it was possible to build a thriving market like this elsewhere in the city, where it still makes economic sense. But there's probably a billion rules and therefore capital/political requirements where it's impossible. So the only contenders will be a bigco shopping market on the bottom floor of a condo building.
Open, chaotic markets with multiple small vendors is too risky (and too much fun) for modern top-down urban planners... so people see the only solution is to cling on to the dwindling past when that was still possible.
Some things do. But is this one of them? The article doesn't make a great case.
And building something new here won't necessarily be short-term.
> Picture yourself waking up to stunning city views, stepping out into a thriving community of boutique shops and artisanal eateries—all just steps from your front door. With thoughtfully designed interiors, cutting-edge amenities, and the character of a bygone era lovingly preserved, Fish Market Flats is more than a place to live—it’s a lifestyle, a legacy, and the future of urban living.
> Don’t miss your chance to be part of this extraordinary transformation. Fish Market Flats: Where History Finds Its New Home. Reserve your slice of history today!
The brief history of the area:
- Isle of Dogs, London, was the main docks area, which shutdown through the 1960s and 1970s due to standard sized containers and automation.
- 1982 Billingsgate moves to Isle of Dogs. There's nothing else there. Docks are closed. Land is cheap, and the site is easily accessible from the East for sellers, and from the West for buyers (London restaurants etc.).
- Creation of the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) in 1981 and the granting of Urban Enterprise Zone status to the Isle of Dogs in 1982, starts the conversion of the old docks into the new business zone
- From the 90s onwards CSFB, BarCap, MS, Citi, HSBC all move to Canary Wharf
- Property and land prices are now vastly higher.
- 2022ish, Crossrail opens. Land prices and property prices increase even more.
Corporation of London has long realised it's sitting on a gold mine: the land north of the North Dock is Billingsgate
We have converted many Victorian train stations into car parks, public baths and lidos into car parks, and excellent examples of Georgian and Elizabethan architecture into car parks. Even Stonehenge is a drive-by attraction and car park, now.
The bank accounts of the wealthy?
In Sydney, the current Fish Market is a grotty assemblage of small warehouses in what's now a prime waterfront location of the city that has become an unlikely tourist attraction, but still serves the wholesale market. They're building a new one right next to it that looks far nicer, leaves tourists much less at risk of getting impaled by a speeding forklift, and will keep the wholesalers around for at least some time since they've been promised fixed rents for the next X years: https://newsydneyfishmarket.insw.com/insw/new-sydney-fish-ma...
All other markets, though, have been shipped off to a massive complex in the industrial suburbs, designed for wholesalers with easy truck access, and with the arguable exception of Paddy's Markets (which mostly sells junk to tourists) there's not a single proper consumer retail market in the entire city. Meanwhile, over in Melbourne, there's a whole slew of them (Queen Vic, Prahran, Footscray etc) that all appear to be thriving.
The thing about markets like this is that once they're gone, you can never get them back again. My home town, Wellington, shut down the markets at some point in the distant past and have been trying to restart them in the more recent past to little success (think a bunch of cars parked in an uncovered car park trying to sell vegetables).
Our reward would be a bacon/sausage and egg butty and a stiff cup of builder's tea.
Good times
It's also a beautiful and historic building and site.
I'm not sure what led to the decision to close it, but I can only assume it was for commercial interests of some form, and will eventually be turned into souless apartments, and the surrounding businesses, bars, pubs and nightclubs will also fall into decline.
Paris closed Les Halles in 1973.[1]
New York's Fulton Fish Market moved in 2005.[2]
A wholesale food market is a transportation hub. It needs good road access. If you can't easily get semitrailer trucks to it, it's in the wrong place. At one time Smithfield was served by underground freight rail, but that shut down long ago. Smithfield has a setup where maybe eight semis can parallel park on the street and back up to loading docks. Hunts Point Market in New York has space for over a thousand.
It's the end of an era, though. One of the last of the big public markets.
Including that William (Braveheart) Wallace was hung, drawn and quartered there in 1305.
In America, we do this by running our ports artisanally. Residents of this nation pay billions for the privilege of 50,000 manually handling containers in the old way: refined, traditional and not by soulless automation. England would do well to learn from our dedication to the past.
Yes, come to the museum to learn about all this culture we used to have, such as an awesome market.
My friend had a pub next to Smithfield so I used to be down there a lot but the meat market is mostly slabs of meat and associated body parts, diesel trucks and closed to the public. It seemed a little out of place in gentrified modern London.
I live in Portugal now, but those times are so vivid. Whenever I was at the office very early, or out parting late enough, the sight of the market workers there was sobering and down to earth.
To think of it not being there, then being replaced with something nondescript, is shameful.
In and around is Farringdon Station, one of the original Tube stations, the bars & pubs (Ye Olde Mitre, The Hope, Fox & Anchor, Smiths of Smithfield, etc.) and clubs (including Fabric).
I was working in the offices above the markets, for a nascent IT company, and believe me they weren't luxurious offices but it was exciting.
Good times, and soon only memories.
Everybody and their uncle bitched and moaned about it, but I think there are few people today who would argue that London would be better off if Covent Garden was still the central produce market rather than the touristic hellhole it is today.
Think of it as encouragement to the traders to find their own new location :)
So the "850 year old" food market is actually a 42 year old market, and will likely continue to operate from a different location as it has done many times in the past.
Edit, to help clarify as other comments also appear to get this wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithfield,_London#Market
> The decision to close the markets and offer traders compensation was made by the Corporation's Court of Common Council.
It seems that they want to close the markets, not to move them
Apparently the plans to build the new market have fallen through
As the Elizabeth Line was being finished I realised that the whole area around there is going to change hugely.
Mind you if that’s the case the station would need to be rebuilt.
The article discusses converting the market to a social space to make the most of the new Museum of London.
Am I missing something, I would have thought the new Museum of London would open as the Old one closed, not a year or so later.
And how on Earth is a new market in Dagenham spec’d as costing a large fraction of a billion quid?
Partly cost disease, partly just that even Dagenham is expensive these days.
After referencing my corporatese translation book, I believe this means "Traders can get fucked we have money to make."
Smithfield’s in particular is better as a new home for the London museum and probably more office/retail buildings than a poorly located commercial meat market
For example: https://dm1igrl0afsra.cloudfront.net/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/...
This is the machine winning.
To second order(s) and above, erasing culture reduces the desire of folks to live and prosper in the first place.
Next you'll be telling me that you use that new fangled electricity for lights, rather than candles!
Newsflash: It's always been about the money. I first went to Canary Wharf in 1995, a friend bought a small house there and it was a shitty place. I visited him again in 2001 and the place had changed "a lot". I ended up living in the same area for a few years around 2017, and CW has nothing from 'that' time. Back then you could buy land/a house at a (considering today's prices) 'cheap'. Now every square meter is worth plenty of Latinum. So yeah, this part (market) could be 'repurposed for luxury offices, luxury homes, etc and whoever owns it can have a x20 return, so why not..?
In December 2012, following criticism that it was insufficiently transparent about its finances, the City of London Corporation revealed that its "City's Cash" account – an endowment fund built up over the past 800 years that it says is used "for the benefit of London as a whole"[51] – holds more than £1.3bn. As of March 2016, it had net assets of £2.3bn.[52] The fund collects money made from the corporation's property and investment earnings.[53]
> Initially the Corporation had planned to move both markets as well as New Spitalfields in Leyton to a £1bn purpose-built site in Dagenham, however this was dropped earlier this month over cost concerns as the council had already spent £308m purchasing and remediating the site in Dagenham.
They were going to spend half their entire endowment on this! And, regardless of whether you have the money to spare, £1bn is an absolutely colossal amount to spend on a market (even a large and very historic one). It just makes no financial sense at all.
Of course, he had no concept of the circulation of money as being interesting and important to the “health” of a city, but most economists since Marx do.
Loads of examples of markets turned to food and culture markets both in London and other places.. Lisbon, Stockholm, etc.. and they are thriving!
And it's depended on by all the fine food fish restaurants, including all the sushi ones.
> £8
Bloody hell...
It's not Greggs prices, but I'd like to try it at least once. It looks like it closes at 8am though.
I mean, or Tesco?
Most startups moved out to WeWork as soon as they could turn a profit. But hey, it was cheap office space in super-central London.
I know of trader who left London to work in Dubai to still take his Russian clients business, and apparently all Russian money is going there instead of London.
First they entice you with a vision of a place where everything is within walking distance, then they do this.
The connection here is that restaurants are part of the appeal of walkable cities and now their life will be made harder. Net effect will of course be an increase in prices.
You need places like these in a city because they shoulder a huge burden, namely logistics, which are particularly hard in densely populated areas.
I'm complaining about places to go within walking distance, such as this market, being removed despite declarations from the city authorities that they're making the place more liveable.
