Chick King makes a valiant plea in the face of demolition proposals

For me, this may the defining action within the entire ‘regeneration’ exercise that has slowly and surely engulfed N17. The coverage on this blog has always been minded to side against, not the intentions of the developers, but the manner in which in too many instances they have operated.

It has been an unenviable position to adopt. Loudmouths have decried me as being anti-Spurs, perhaps they were the same people who thought the attempted arson attack on Archway Steel was funny or fair. There have also been less aggressive critics, making an equally determined case for improving an area that has not been in the best shape for some while.

Now we are at a crossroads, my friends. Few if any of us ever did any business with Archway Steel, or a great many others that have already been airbrushed out of the way in Haringey. However, Chick King has been part of the Spurs ‘match day experience’ for decades. I’ve never had a bad meal there, I know that much.

Here is the plea of the family. If you feel you can help them, now is the time to reveal yourself to them.

This Thursday, 7 pm at Tottenham Green, the planning committee meets to consider Lendlease’s application for ‘High Road West’. Please read objections 224 & 225 from the Tryfonos family, who have lived and ran their businesses opposite the stadium for over 40 years.

The planning red line avoids the other blocks of shops but zigzags to include their block so that Spurs gain a gentrified approach to the stadium. Submission: Objection Comments:

I am Alex Tryfonos, and along with my brother Agis, own and run the Chick-King business at 755 Tottenham High Road N17 for over 40 years. In addition, our family owns four more retail freehold premises on the High Road.

These include K&M Stores Locksmiths, Little Princess Shop, The Tottenham Snack Bar, and The Nail Group. We object to the planning application as it would mean the loss of these shops and would take away our freehold interests, that we have built up over the past five decades. These properties provided our current income and are a legacy to our future generations.

We came here as immigrants in the early seventies, my father Kyriacos and my mother, Maria first leased the shop at 757 High Road in 1976, with the upstairs accommodation becoming the family home.

They still live there today. They are elderly and having to move at this time of their lives is not just unfair but could also cause ill-health. They are already anxious about maybe losing their home and being forced out of the community they have been settled in for 46 years.

We subsequently purchased the freehold in 1978. Recognising the importance of the Tottenham football ground to our business, the family decided to invest in more properties. All of the shop premises have homes above and demolition means the loss of housing in Tottenham.

These are families living with the uncertainty of the regeneration scheme, but also having to maybe find new jobs and new schools in a new area.We opened the Chick-King business in 1981 as a restaurant takeaway of fried chicken using our own unique recipe.

The recipe was a family favourite and we decided to share the love with the public. They liked it too and we quickly became the Tottenham place to eat. People associate Chick-King with Tottenham, and we are a positive landmark in a community that has suffered from negative press.

We are a community-friendly business, and our prices are affordable to those with low incomes. As well as being a business Chick-King is a social hub, where people can connect with others and feel part of the community. All members of the community visit and this help to understand between generations and promotes social cohesion.

We have sacrificed a lot of years of work and have gone for months without having a day off to establish our business and make a success of it. These hours of serving the community mean missing your children’s birthday or having to miss a special family occasion.

I accept that is the sacrifice you have to make as a business owner, but you should understand we did that to make a better future for our families, and this application threatens that.The majority of our customers are from the diverse ethnic groups living in Tottenham, and on match days we are extremely busy with Spurs fans.

This unique location fronting the Spurs stadium is irreplaceable as a business location. Any talk of us being forced to re-locate has to accept that we will lose our place across from the stadium with a detrimental effect on our takings and the viability of the business.

Any loss of trade and sales would also impact the staff levels we need to run the businesses. It could result in job losses and this would cause families to lose income. We owe our success to the support of the local community, and all the Spurs fans for their continuous support. They put us on the map and without them, we would have no business.

Chick-King now is an established business; known in Tottenham and across London, and throughout many places in England. Some of our customers include well know Rappers, other musicians, singers, and professional Premier league footballers.

As well as objecting to the planning application, I want to make some points about the Haringey Council process that has led to the High Road West partnership with Lendlease and their planned demolition of housing and businesses in North Tottenham. The local community, both traders and residents, were not given a chance in the’ consultation’ that started in 2014. The process was so flawed and badly administered. It has totally failed the businesses and the people of Tottenham.

In every consultation Haringey Council run the community said that the character of the Tottenham High Road should be retained and that the local business should remain and be supported so they can continue to thrive. I believe that any planning application for the area should reflect those expressed views of residents and should seek to support the retention of existing established local business.

Figures taken from the 2014 consultation are inaccurate and manipulated to achieve the preferred demolition and densification Council plan. The plans were misleading: marking new buildings for community use when they will in fact be retail outlets, which incorporated community facilities. The 68% widely quoted figure that reportedly shows overwhelming support for the demolition plans, is not justified.

As a percentage of the total households on the Love lane estate it is just 40%. What about the views of the 60%? Of the wider community of 4000 homes and businesses the ‘68%’ is a mere 3% of the total community. That is using the figures quoted in the Council’s report on the consultation. In contrast,

70 replies from local businesses were never included in the figures and were only placed in the appendix to the consultation report, with the clear intention of minimising the real voice of businesses and the community. I believe there has been no meaningful engagement with local business about the development of this Regeneration plan.

We have been misled by our own elected representatives. The key decisions for this master plan were made long before any consultation. Key factors were decided at the beginning of 2012. That’s when our small businesses were sacrificed in order that one very big business could become even richer.

The demolition of our shops and businesses’ premises became a non-negotiable feature of every master plan scenario. Where is the Democracy in that? That is why in 2014 we started a petition with the intention to give the community a chance to show how they felt about the Council’s proposals.

We had over 4000 signatures opposing the demolition of any of the High road shops and any loss of local business. 3 This option to comment was not given to them in the consultation, where comments are largely on the Council’s preferred scenarios.

These figures should have been added to the report on the High Road West Consultation. The result would have been a resounding NO to the Council’s pushed plans of demolition. However, this was not allowed to happen. When we presented the petition to the then Cabinet leader for regeneration Cllr Alan Strickland in 2014, he neglected to tell us the petition had to be formally presented and so the figures were never included.

Have we come through recession and through riots to have our businesses blighted like this? Are successful businesses that contributed to the local economy and we have worked and developed over many years for it to be snatched away and given to developers for their profit? The whole consultations were a sham, waste of local peoples’ money it is not an independent study. Regeneration of Tottenham should not be about boosting land values to justify an investment. The Council should not be acting like a Corporation. Regeneration should create hope for the existing community by building a better neighbourhood.

Regeneration is not about moving the existing community OUT so more ‘upmarket’ people can move in. The application side boundary marked in red in the scheme is discriminatory, while all of our buildings are proposed to be demolished as part of the development, the application side boundary becomes more ‘jagged edge’ on its boundary with Tottenham high road, which means that the rest of the buildings fronting the high road just north of us are spared from the redevelopment.

No justification whatsoever has been provided for the difference of approach between the different premises. This is clearly of significant concern to us whose premises are proposed to be demolished, who we have no clarity as to why our premises have been selected over others, or maybe its just because we are in a prime location fronting the new Tottenham football stadium? We do not want the other properties to be demolished, but why are they being treated differently to us?

The application side boundary marked in red should be moved at the back of our premises to be consistent with the rest of the high road west planning application, so we are also spared from the redevelopment. We are just a part of the Tottenham community as them and we should be retained too to keep the current character of the historic High Road. In considering this aspect of the proposed development, the council must ensure not only that it complies with its public sector equality duty under Section 149, but also that neither it nor the applicant causes indirect discrimination in contravention of Section 19 of the Equality Act 2010.

Reject this planning application and genuinely engage with the local community to design improvement plans to benefit residents with new housing and keep the shops as local people want. Come up with a plan that includes this Business Community and allows it to move forward and grow within the regeneration process not be excluded from it.

This business community has been part of the fabric of Tottenham in most cases for over 20 years and in one case for more than 75 years. Are we to be thrown out to make way for a developer, this planning application should represent the best interest of local people and local business? We have every right to keep our business and remain trading in our shops, and above all regeneration should be around us and the community, no one should have the right to take your property away and give it to a developer and justify that is in the public interest, how about our rights and interests. We have been made to look like the new David and Goliath.

As a family, we strongly object to this planning application. Alex Tryfonos (Chick-King) 755 High Road, N17Application Reference No. : HGY/2021/3175 Site Address: High Road West London N17 Comments by: Kate Tryfonos From: 745 High Road Tottenham London N17 8AH Submission: Objection Comments: I am Kate Tryfonos and I am the owner of K&M Stores and I own the freehold which is located at 745 High Road, N17.

My family also own another 4 freehold properties on Tottenham High Road which is directly opposite the Tottenham stadium. My family first came to Tottenham in 1976 opening their first business and slowly over the years they were able to expand and buy their second shop and started to build a future for their family.

In 1991 we opened K&M Stores and we have been serving the local community for the last 30 years our business is family ran which started with my parents and myself and now my children are involved. My business sells DIY hardware and household goods and we offer locksmith services. We have invested a lot of time and money into this business over the years to make sure we bring the local community everything they need.

The local community is like a family to us as we have seen many grow up into adults and who now have families of their own and who have all supported us over the years. We are in a prime location on Tottenham High Road which we have worked very hard over the years to make successful so we can provide for our families and give something to our community, these plans for redevelopment to push us out seem very unfair taking away our shops is not benefitting the local area we are a part of Tottenham being here for so many years. In all the time that these proposals have been discussed, we have not been looked after or anyone caring what we think or what the local people would like.

Why would the council spend millions of pounds on refurbishing the rest of the High Road shops near us and we have been forgotten and there is no justification to that. Why are we being discriminated against? In all these proposals our shops have never been included why is that??

I have also lived on Tottenham High Road since 1980 at 755a High Road and my parents still live at 757a High Road, the redevelopment would mean upheaving me and them at our ages to relocate which I don’t think is fair I have lived at my home for the last 41 years and my parents for the last 46 years knowing that these plans are being discussed has already had a detrimental effect on my parents after being settled for so many years.

2 This planning application would not just affect our businesses, but also my home. We as a family totally object to this planning application. Kate Tryfonos K&M Stores.