They call it a “glow-up”, a makeover with transformative abilities, and these days it applies to neighbourhoods as well as A-list slebs, reality TV stars and Pomeranians in Louis Vuitton prams. Queensway is experiencing one right now, bolstered by an anchor-brand hotel at one end — Britain’s first Six Senses luxury wellness hotel — and an anchor-brand restaurant — The Park — at the other, and it heralds a rejuvenation of an area that has often been thought of — unfairly, I think — as a slightly poor relation of Notting Hill.
Our business editor Jonathan Prynn has been monitoring the gentrification of Queensway for more than a decade, but this summer it is actually starting to seriously take shape. The Park is Jeremy King’s second big launch of the year — following his Le Caprice reboot, Arlington, and where the corner table is still fought over by media bigwigs — and it has already become a destination eatery for local residents as well as their highfalutin’ neighbours on the south side of Hyde Park.
Four years ago, in between lockdowns, I was given a virtual tour of the new Six Senses hotel, in a marketing suite behind the mid-Covid carcass of the old Whiteleys, the former department store (complete with its colonnaded Grade II listed façade). It didn’t just look extraordinary, it also looked completely at odds with the ugly maze of fast-foot outlets, bookies and mobile-phone repair pop-ups that still littered the rest of Queensway.
This scheme should change the profile of a part of London which has always punched below its weight
These tawdry little shops are gradually closing, part of a mammoth gentrification scheme which should change the profile of a part of London that has always punched below its weight. The backers of the scheme have carefully bought dozens of properties along the street — including the Queens ice rink — and all bodes well for the future of a street that apart from Whiteleys was principally known for the Royal China (once the best Chinese restaurant in town).
If you look at a map of London and examine the gilt-edged neighbourhoods that abut three-quarters of Hyde Park, you’ll see the greatest density of wealth in the country, but walk north from Mayfair, Kensington, Belgravia or South Kensington and you’ll find a complex and fractured postcode that has never revealed its full potential. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that its time has come. I moved from Brixton to Shepherd’s Bush in 1987, just as Brixton started its climb towards gentrification, and moved out of the Bush in 1992 as it then did the same; so, having moved to Bayswater in 1998 I think I’m due some Monopoly luck. If the Queensway effect spreads east, then it just might be my turn. I’m hoping that there is too much invested in it not to work.
This is a £3 billion regeneration involving Parisian-style street pavilions, public realm improvements, significant greening, new street lighting, wider pavements and part-pedestrianised side roads, a massive new retail strategy, a new public entrance to Hyde Park and a series of landmark developments, including of course the Six Senses — temptations comprise 20 shops and restaurants, a Third Space gym, and an Everyman cinema to a design by starchitects Foster + Partners.
Located opposite will be a new entrance to Kensington Gardens, with a new crossing and road junction connecting the high street to Hyde Park with an improved pedestrian crossing and a state-of-the-art traffic calming design.
If you speak to Westminster council, they like to repeat that this is a blueprint for the future of the London high street, and if it is then it’s a long time coming. If the CGI imagery is to be believed — and I’ve got no reason not to (it’s extremely fancy) — then the area is actually going to make Notting Hill start to look rather shabby. The original ambition was to turn Queensway into an urban village, a “Covent Garden of the West”, although I would imagine it’s going to be a lot nicer than that. After all, no one in their right mind would want a procession of street entertainers (and I use the term advisedly) anywhere near London’s favourite park.
So, yah boo sucks, West Eleven. This year it’s all about W2. Whether you like it or not. Which you probably don’t.
