Home and office project at Canary Wharf gets approval

[LONDON] Canary Wharf Group plc won local-government approval to build as many as 3,610 homes and office space adjacent to London's Canary Wharf business district.

The council for the Tower Hamlets borough voted in favour of the Wood Wharf project at a meeting on Monday. The development includes shops, a hotel and 3.8 million sq ft of office space, according to a filing by the council. At 4.9 million sq ft, the project is the biggest in the company's development pipeline; and it will include a minimum of 1,700 homes.

Canary Wharf Group, controlled by Songbird Estates plc, revised the Wood Wharf plan, reducing the size of individual office buildings so that they would appeal to a broader range of tenants, the parent company said on March 28. Canary Wharf in August won approval to build a London tower as high as 190 m that it redesigned after the financial crisis to exclude the large trading floors typically used by banks.