Charles: unveils new plans
London Evening Standard/London

Prince Charles yesterday unveiled plans to create a vibrant “community hub” around Waterloo station by drawing on the spending power of commuters.
He joined forces with TV property expert Kirstie Allsopp to launch a scheme that would tie together the revamp of the station’s former Eurostar platforms with other projects, such as the nearby Shell building.
Charles’s charity The Prince’s Foundation, renowned for its work in the Galapagos islands and in eathquake-ravaged Haiti, has drawn ideas from the community for the regeneration of the area.
Waterloo is used by 86mn passengers a year but is the capital’s only major station without a wider regeneration scheme. The project aims to put the “heart” back into the area and create thousands of jobs.
Allsopp, a co-presenter of Channel 4’s Location, Location, Location and a foundation ambassador, said she hoped Waterloo could follow Euston in its redevelopment with shops.
“We all go into stations and through them,” she said. “That must impact the area. Passengers are not making a huge contribution to businesses in the area.
If you were sitting in Lower Marsh and seeing all this stuff whizzing around you, but not able to attract people to come into your place, it would be very frustrating.”
She said she had seen her home area of Notting Hill transformed over the 17 years she has lived there and encouraged other areas to follow suit.
“The changes that I have seen in Portobello Road and Golborne Road and W10 are absolutely extraordinary. Some of them are slightly sad, when an area goes from being antique shops to being full of Ralph Lauren, but you see how that ripples out and areas that were previously no-go areas have become areas for families.”
The plans would make the area from Lower Marsh to the Old Vic theatre the community “hub” and aim to make greater use of vacant buildings. One idea is to turn the National Theatre’s studios into a new home for Handspring, the puppet company behind the stage show War Horse.
The Prince of Wales yesterday visited Lower Marsh to see some of the projects already under way before making a speech at St James’s Palace on the foundation’s rebranding — it will no longer be known as the foundation “for the built environment” — and its refocused vision.