Canary Wharf
Canary Wharf (dt. "Kanaren- Kai ") is an office building complex on the Isle of Dogs in London's borough of Tower Hamlets . It is located in the heart of the Docklands , the former port area of the British capital. Canary Wharf competes with the historically grown financial center in the City of London . Here are three of the tallest buildings in the UK, One Canada Square , HSBC Tower and Citigroup Center .
business center
Companies that have settled in Canary Wharf include financial institutions such as Credit Suisse , HSBC , Citigroup , Morgan Stanley , Bank of America, and Barclays . Major media companies have their headquarters here, including The Daily Telegraph , The Independent , Thomson Reuters and the Daily Mirror . Also represented here are the European headquarters of Texaco , the headquarters of Clifford Chance , one of the world's largest law firms, the Financial Services Authority and the accounting firm KPMG .
At the beginning of the year, the official number of employees working here was 78,000, of which 25 percent live in the five surrounding city districts. Canary Wharf is also becoming an expensive and exclusive shopping district, especially after the Jubilee Place mall opened in 2004. There are over 200 stores with more than 4,500 sales people. Around 500,000 people go shopping here every week.
Canary Wharf has excellent public transport connections. The fully automatic light rail system Docklands Light Railway has stopped at Canary Wharf (DLR) station since 1991 . In 1999 the Jubilee Line of the London Underground was opened, which stops in the Canary Wharf (London Underground) station of the same name but is spatially separate . The London City Airport is only a few kilometers to the east and can be reached in under 15 minutes by regular buses, taxis and the DLR. From Canary Wharf Pier, ships continue to make connections on the Thames towards the city center; the Thames Clippers run every 20 minutes during the week.
history
Canary Wharf was once the location of warehouses in the middle of the docks . The name is derived from the sea trade with the Canary Islands , which was carried out from here. In the 1960s, the port and industrial facilities began to decline. In 1981 the British government decided on a program to revitalize an area of 21 km². In order to coordinate the project, the development company "London Docklands Development Corporation" was founded. In the early years, light industry companies set up shop here, and the largest tenant in Canary Wharf was a TV production studio.
In 1984 Michael von Clemm, the chairman of the investment bank Credit Suisse , visited Docklands on behalf of a client to look for a location for a food processing company. He was also aware that the bank's offices in the City of London were too small, especially in view of the imminent deregulation of the financial markets in 1986. Von Clemm came up with the idea of using the area for office buildings. However, a critical mass was necessary to make the whole project profitable at all. Corresponding plans were presented together with the Morgan Stanley company , but later put back on file. When the Docklands Light Railway opened in 1987 , Canary Wharf did not have a station because the area was not expected to develop.
In 1988, however, the Canadian company Olympia and York took over the project and made it ready for construction. Construction began in the same year and the first phase was completed in 1992. Olympia and York committed to cover half the cost of the planned extension of the Jubilee Line . At the beginning of the 1990s, the global real estate market collapsed. The demand for office space fell sharply and Olympia and York went bankrupt. The top half of the One Canada Square skyscraper remained without tenants, and Canary Wharf became a symbol of the housing crisis.
In December 1995 an international consortium bought the site. At that time, around 13,000 jobs were located here, but over half of the existing office properties were still vacant. A major event in the revitalization of the Canary Wharf project was the start of construction on the Jubilee Line, which had been postponed several times. From then on, companies increasingly viewed the area as an alternative to traditional business centers. In addition to the completion of the deferred construction phases, the increasing demand also made it possible to implement additional projects. In March 2004 the operating company Canary Wharf Group plc was taken over by the Songbird investor consortium led by Morgan Stanley.
In February 1996, exploded near Canary Wharf station on the South Quay DLR a car bomb of the IRA . Two people were killed, 39 injured. There was property damage of £ 85 million .
Occurrence in pop culture
In the series Doctor Who is the fictional Torchwood Institute in the office complex, which is destroyed in the finale of the second season in the fight against the Daleks and Cybermen. The events after this battle are told in the Torchwood spin-off .
See also
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 13 ″ N , 0 ° 1 ′ 6 ″ W.