Londoners love shopping. There'll be hundreds of thousands of Londoners out today pottering round designer boutiques, browsing in department stores and nibbling muffins in coffee shops. Heaven knows why, but there will be. But we're not big on shopping in Tower Hamlets. Canary Wharf has plenty of clone stores, but they're mostly aimed at lunchtime bankers. The new Spitalfields market has a few chic retail outlets, but they're mostly for pretentious incomers. But most Tower Hamlets residents do much of their shopping in lesser cheaper shops on ordinary independent parades. We don't do malls. So it's not surprising that Tobacco Dock was doomed.
It sounded like a good idea at the time. Take a Grade I listed warehouse in Wapping, originally a store for imported tobacco, and convert it into a £47 million shopping centre. The intention was to create the Covent Garden of the East End (that's a bijou shopping centre, not a fruit and vegetable market) in an iconic 200 year-old building. People would come from far and wide to browse beneath its vaulted brickarches, perhaps taking home a nice woollen cardigan or a pair of ruby stilettos or an ethnic wooden thingamajig. But it didn't happen.
There's a huge multi-storey car park next door, but it's never been full of shopping trolleys. There's Rupert Murdoch's giant News International headquarters immediately adjacent, but no easy passage from one to the other. There are two fullsize pirateships positioned outside by the waterway, but kids never nagged their parents to bring them sightseeing. There was even an accessible tube and DLR station within easy walking distance, but few people bothered. Too far from the capital's retail epicentre, too close to people who didn't need luxuries and couldn't afford them anyway. Opened in 1989, the Tobacco Dock shopping centre survived for only a few years before limping to an embarrassed close.
But one sandwich shop is still open. And the most surprising thing about Tobacco Dock is that the entire complex is still maintained and managed and cleaned, just for them. Heaven knows how Frank & Stein have survived here since day 1, they must serve up the finest baguettes in all of Wapping. It's certainly not their unique cellar ambience, tucked up a side passage near the WC with a couple of lonely tables dumped outside. And it's not their contribution to 24-hour cafe society, because the deli counter is (very) closed at evenings and weekends. But on weekdays anybody can wander inside Tobacco Dock through the unlocked gates and take a stroll around the interior, even if they have no interest whatsoever in buying pastrami in a ciabatta.
It's like a ghost mall, maybe that one in Dawn of the Dead, with eerie empty walkways crossing in front of rows of vacant shopfronts. It feels as if you're trespassing, rather than exploring, although the bored security guard probably won't give you a second look. The arched brickwork is enticingly authentic, but there are also several artificial Thatcherite extras dropped in all around the place. Those chunky lanterns, for example, or the pair of scarystatues by the empty maps near the mall entrance. The central stone staircase is garish and optimistically huge, designed for excessive footfall that never came. Elsewhere are unnecessarily ornate domed pergolas, one topped off with a metal globe, surrounding freshly-watered potted plants. All that architectural effort for so little return.
One company's dreams came tumbling down inside Tobacco Dock's vaults with one hell of a crash. But someone, somehow, someday, surely, must be able to breathe some life back into the place. Factory outlet? Row of pound shops? Any takers?
It sounded like a good idea at the time. Take a Grade I listed warehouse in Wapping, originally a store for imported tobacco, and convert it into a £47 million shopping centre. The intention was to create the Covent Garden of the East End (that's a bijou shopping centre, not a fruit and vegetable market) in an iconic 200 year-old building. People would come from far and wide to browse beneath its vaulted brick arches, perhaps taking home a nice woollen cardigan or a pair of ruby stilettos or an ethnic wooden thingamajig. But it didn't happen.
But one sandwich shop is still open. And the most surprising thing about Tobacco Dock is that the entire complex is still maintained and managed and cleaned, just for them. Heaven knows how Frank & Stein have survived here since day 1, they must serve up the finest baguettes in all of Wapping. It's certainly not their unique cellar ambience, tucked up a side passage near the WC with a couple of lonely tables dumped outside. And it's not their contribution to 24-hour cafe society, because the deli counter is (very) closed at evenings and weekends. But on weekdays anybody can wander inside Tobacco Dock through the unlocked gates and take a stroll around the interior, even if they have no interest whatsoever in buying pastrami in a ciabatta.
It's like a ghost mall, maybe that one in Dawn of the Dead, with eerie empty walkways crossing in front of rows of vacant shopfronts. It feels as if you're trespassing, rather than exploring, although the bored security guard probably won't give you a second look. The arched brickwork is enticingly authentic, but there are also several artificial Thatcherite extras dropped in all around the place. Those chunky lanterns, for example, or the pair of scary statues by the empty maps near the mall entrance. The central stone staircase is garish and optimistically huge, designed for excessive footfall that never came. Elsewhere are unnecessarily ornate domed pergolas, one topped off with a metal globe, surrounding freshly-watered potted plants. All that architectural effort for so little return.
