When plans are turned upside down

With the efforts the construction industry goes to when building somewhere unique and ‘for specific use’, it must be quite disheartening for those involved when, after a relatively short period, these efforts have been set aside, leaving all the specified requirements asked of the client in many cases going to waste.

The term ‘throwaway society’ covers many aspects of life including things like construction in consideration of the millions spent creating something perhaps not to everyone’s taste, but at some considerable expense, and then abandoning it after say 10 years.

When the building is a

‘new build’, quite often it’s the efforts taken to firstly purchase the site, the costs of getting architects in and then clearing the planning hurdles, it all costs money, time and effort and seems pretty wasteful.

This isn’t a new thing though, it’s been going on since the 1980s.

Buildings up and down the country - barely five, 10 or 15 years old - have long been built at some expense, only to become surplus to requirements.

Understandable if the occupier had gone bust, but when they are still trading and moved elsewhere, it does seem pretty wasteful.

Office complexes have been a candidate for this over the years in our town of Ashford.

Some have been reused by being split for different tenants, but equally mothballing features like sizeable purpose-built kitchens in these complexes.

One such purpose-built office complex was Charter House, today known as The Panorama, and with mass conversion commencing almost nine years ago.

Charter House had all the things like a large on-site kitchen and canteen built into its design.

Complete with stylish and modern air-conditioned office suites, the company, Charter Consolidated, deserted the building after 10 years to move back to the city.

The floors were then occupied by individual tenants for a number of years, but the kitchens and catering facilities which were the pride of the complex became storage areas.

These could cater for the workforce of staff and were used for functions, meetings and social events.

All changed in 2013 when work commenced to strip the building of its interior ready for what turned out to be a controversial conversion into luxury apartments and flats.

This week ventures back to August 2013 when the stripping of the building was well under way.

■ Email me: rememberwhen_kmash@ hotmail.co.uk

2 August 2013 - On a clear day, the views from the former office complex are lovely. A bird’s-eye view of the town illustrates the old and the new side by side. This showing one of the original top floor balconies of the office complex

3 August 2013 - One of the former office suites stripped ready for conversion on the east wing

1 August 2013 - Floor by floor, the office suites are stripped out and the familiar tinted windows are removed in this view taken from the roof showing the front of Charter House

The Duke of Edinburgh with The Queen at the Kent County Show