How developer Delancey plans to radically transform the land next to the old York Road station – close to the King’s Cross railwaylands regeneration site. Part of the building will be made available for public use

AN “underutilised” site in York Way is set to have a major facelift after councillors agreed permission for a new “life sciences” research laboratory to be built.

The striking glass designs for the plot next to the long-closed York Road underground station were approved at a meeting on Monday evening. At nine storeys, developer Delancey’s scheme will be bigger than Islington’s standard guidelines and some objections had been filed over the scale of the scheme.

These included an objection from neighbouring Camden’s planning officers, who were in turn reminded of the number of large buildings that have been constructed on the nearby King’s Cross railwaylands regeneration site on its side of the borough boundary.

Islington’s own team of planners said the benefits, including improved pavements and public routes into Bingfield Street, should be accepted.

While the research labs will be on upper floors, developers are offering to create space for community events and a “makerspace” for educational use.

It has been drawn up by architects Kohn Pedersen Fox. Everything currently on the site will be demolished to make way for the new building.

The location is close to the “knowledge quarter” – the name given to the cluster of research institutes, tech companies, libraries and laboratories which have made King’s Cross their home in recent years.

Planning committee member Labour councillor Paul Convery said: “I think I should say of the applicant that I think they’ve done a very good job engaging with the community, with the residential neighbours.

“They actually went door-knocking the flats all around the place and I was surprised actually at how positive an awful lot of residents were, fully cognisant of the size of the scheme and so forth.”

He added: “There is a lot of enthusiasm for developing this little nugget of land on the west side of Cally, which increasingly looks like a real sore thumb when you see the whole of the King’s Cross Central development.

“I’m also amused that there are objections from Camden because over the last 15 years we have not objected to some of their schemes and it is on the same scale and for the same purpose – which is really fundamentally regenerating this part of north London.”

Green councillor Benali Hamdache added: “It’s a welcome adaptation of a piece of land that is in poor use. I’m always very struck by the reportage of national shortage of life sciences offices.”

Nathan Watt, the development director for Delancey, told the meeting: “When I first looked at the site, one agent actually made a comment to say that he thought the site was in the middle of nowhere.

That stuck with me because I thought: A, fundamentally he was wrong, and B, the site is actually the missing piece of a jigsaw of several well-established communities.

“When we started talking with local people, it quickly became clear that the site was not in the middle of nowhere, but actually was the middle of somewhere to be. The right develop­ment can restitch the site back into the fabric of Islington and its communities.”

Having secured planning permission, Delancey has said it wants to start work with a view to completing the project in 2028.

The ghost station next door left never to reopen

York Road station has been closed since 1932

IT was perhaps inevitable, given the proximity between the proposed new research lab and the York Road ghost station, that somebody would mention the calls for the tube station to be reopened.

Transport chiefs have always said that it would make Piccadilly line journeys too long, but supporters say it is needed to break up the gap between King’s Cross and Caledonian Road.

The planning application decided on Monday had no relation to the future of the station. But Green councillor Benali Hamdache told the meeting that the works should not kill off the possibility of it reopening in the future.

“York Road station, which at times we have called, I think, for return to use,” he said. “I wanted to ask whether or not this development perhaps provided any oppor­tun­ities or barriers to the reuse of the tube station there. It’s an awfully long gap between King’s Cross and Caledonian Road.”

An Islington planning officer said: “It is proposed to open up the space in front of the station. It’s part of the proposed public realm works. So I would not see why these proposals would be a barrier to the York Road station coming forward at a later time.”

Occasionally, petitions emerge calling for the station – designed with the same claret tiling as other stations in north London – to be reinstated.

But it has now been closed since 1932 and there is no appetite at City Hall to revisit the idea of getting trains stopping there again.

Boris Johnson said during his time as London Mayor that it had been looked at and that a study had “concluded that there were benefits but that these were not sufficient to justify the cost and extended journey times for existing users of the Piccadilly line”.

He added: “The area is well served by buses and nearby King’s Cross St Pancras and Caledonian Road tube stations.”

The idea of reopening Maiden Lane overground station has also been discussed.