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Job loss alert over land sale
A LAND deal between the council and a Camden market magnate will drive small firms out of the borough, businessmen fear.
Tenants in James Cameron House, Castlehaven Road, are angry at the imminent sale of the business premises they lease. The buyer is a company which already owns large parts of adjacent Hawley Wharf and Stables market.
Saad Saraf, boss of Media Reach Advertising and a 16-year lessee, said: “People are very angry- they wanted the opportunity to buy their units but were told they were not for sale.
“Now we hear it is just going to be sold, without consultation and with no opportunity to buy or to come up with a counter-offer. We have been here a long time and this location is right for us and for our local staff. How do tax-payers know they are getting a good deal?
“How is it possible for small businesses to be disregarded? If we leave here we will have to relocate, perhaps to West London.”
The sale of Cameron House to Ground Gilbey Ltd – which has the same shareholders as Stables Market Ltd, including Richard Caring – will expand his canal-side empire and allow plans for a massive redevelopment.
The company told the New Journal yesterday (Wednesday) it had no immediate plans apart from rehousing Stables Market office staff in the building.
“There are absolutely no plans at present and any scheme will be fully consulted on if they decide at some time in the future to consider development. We are talking years in the future not months,” a spokesman said. “The status of the existing tenants remains unchanged,” he added.
Although discussions were handled “on the basis that the council is not a willing vendor of this property”, a council report said, the sale was recommended because “terms were sufficiently in excess of market value”.
Although the offer remains commercially confidential, the council meeting to discuss it last year was of a kind only called for properties worth more than £2.5m.
A Town Hall statement said: “The council’s constitution does not provide that tenants of commercial investment properties must be consulted before a sale of a commercial property is agreed.”
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