I have had an excellent view of the rather undistinguished block of flats being erected at Herculaneum Quay. It has been under intermittent construction since 2007, and despite frequent stoppages over the past year is now making serious progress.

Judging by the use of road cranes for the steelworks and its intermittent progress, it is being built on a shoestring, and it was no great surprise when the cost of cladding it so that internal work could be carried out was saved by it being 'shrink wrapped' with some kind of plastic film.

Alas, they have not considered its exposed position and the force of the wind. The recent breezes - far below a serious gale - have left it all in tatters over the past few days.

Despite the fact that as far as I am concerned it is just another boring blot on the landscape, I feel quite sorry for them, in particular, the poor chap who was only a few days back proudly pointing out the advantages of this wondrous film on youtube from this very building!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhmN-7cAQ9c

I suspect the older and more experienced members of the company had a more realistic view of what was likely to happen and wanted nothing to do with any hubris about it, and handed it on to this enthusiastic but naive young chap. Cruel, very cruel!

The first five floors were built for a 14 storey building, it is now to be a 22 storey building.

It looks like a multi-storey car park but its going to be 101 apartments.

I was by there at Cars and Coffee at the beginning of the month, apart from the site boarding there didn't seem to be much progress.

I thought it was to be 15. It's no great asset to the landscape whatever the height is. If I lived on Grafton Street I'd be incandescent with rage at having my view of the river obscured by this block of cheap flats.

Flats are up for sale, some being specifically targeted for buy-to-let.

Very roughly its an average of about £120,000 per bedroom for river view apartments which isn't too bad and substantially less for apartments with a poorer view which could be good bargains. No idea what the management charges are going to be.

CLICKY

What an interesting article, I did enjoy the video, Aubrey was very enthusiastic about his "drum tight" plastic. It is a shame if it did not work as expected especially as we have not experienced any serious windy weather as yet. Thanks DD for the link to the website advertising the flats it was most informative. I found the flats to look very attractive, you could sit for hours watching activity on the river (if there was any) I would expect it to get really hot in there when the sun was shining. One extra benefit of living there which they failed to advertise is given the size and amount of glass in the windows that you could get a healthy crop of tomatoes each year.