The revival of London's royal parks

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10 April 2012

The high-profile bidding war over a small, Grade II-listed 19th-century munitions depot in Kensington Gardens is the latest sign of the transformation of the once fusty Royal Parks into dynamic commercial spaces.

No longer are they places you have to cross on the way to buy something somewhere else. They have become destinations in their own right: attendance figures are up 30 per cent and, in seven years, earnings have risen an incredible 400 per cent.

This is just the beginning. Now in his appraisal of future profitability, Royal Parks chief executive Mark Camley has turned his beady eye to the Parks' architectural "furniture": the tumbledown Park Lodges are up for rent via Knight Frank, and two sites within Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens have been earmarked to become a contemporary art "hub".

Camley already knows art works rather well in parks, so he has offered up both the Magazine, an old munitions depot just over the Serpentine bridge, and the Nursery, 80,000 square feet of greenhouses in Hyde Park, for transformation into contemporary art sites. The plan is that the Magazine, at least, will be ready by the time the Olympics kicks off.

On the shortlist of three for the Magazine is Damien Hirst, who wants to create a personal museum filled with the cream of his own collection, plus his £50 million diamond skull, For the Love of God. He would also make a set of bronze gates and eight stained-glass windows for the building. It seems, however, that he has been beaten. By a higher bid.

Julia Peyton-Jones, the elegant curator of the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, is an obvious contender and would no doubt like to have a second version just down the road, where she could install a café and other commercially enterprising elements. But if she has plans for expansion, Peyton-Jones is not letting on.

Whether the bigger bid is from Peyton-Jones or not, the Hirst camp is mightily cheesed off.
"The people who are making the decision about the Magazine seem unaware of the value of our bid in terms of its heritage," says architect Mike Rundell, who has been working with Hirst. "It was an incredibly exciting opportunity, but it may be lost, because someone has made a bigger financial offer."

Really? "We had three fantastic bids all of which we would have been delighted to honour," says Camley, who will be announcing the winner in a matter of weeks. "All were great opportunities, but there was one party who bid more. And they are our preferred bidder. Finance was certainly one element of it. But it also was about the quality of the art concerned."

The winner may be neither Hirst nor Peyton-Jones, of course, because the "preferred bidder" might yet turn out to be the mysterious "third man", believed to be from India.

However, for all the fuss, Kensington Gardens is just one of nine parks in Camley's remit: the suburban trio of Richmond, Bushy and Greenwich, and the central quintet of Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, St James's, Green Park and Regent's Park come to a total of 5,000 acres of green space, oases of fresh air in Europe's biggest, most polluted capital.

Billboards are not allowed in the parks but the light of commercialism is shining brightly through the London planes.

"We don't charge an entrance fee," says Sara Lom, of the Royal Parks Foundation, the Parks' fund-raising arm set up a few years ago. "So the art is to have things that make a profit but which aren't right in your face." Two years ago, Lom pioneered the Royal Parks Half Marathon, which now annually attracts 12,000 entrants and makes a profit of around £750,000.

Fearing he might be a casualty of the new Government's tight fiscal regime, Camley has been taking a hard-nosed look at self-funding parks around the world, including Central Park in New York. He is in charge of £20 million worth of public money from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, but in real terms, this is diminishing. Indeed, it may disappear altogether in the future.

"I think the intention is that we should be financially autonomous, self-funding," says Mark Washlevsky, park manager of St James's Park, whose duties include caring for 29,000 wallflowers outside Buckingham Palace. And so Camley has to find cash amid the shrubbery.

Hence the arrival of serious restaurants. There's Oliver Peyton in St James's Park, and Ben and Hugo Warner of upmarket Benugo at Hyde Park. Ben Warner sums up how he was wooed: "They didn't want the equivalent of a service station café.

They wanted something that shared their aspirations; they are about the enjoyment of life in the park. And they wanted to make it commercial. By giving people what they really want to eat, we've been able to double sales in the last year." Expansion is part of the story; Warner has just opened Hyde Park's first Gin Bar, whose charms are certainly on a different scale from the statue of Peter Pan.

But if you want to make money, value for money must not be discounted. And the Parks have become good at value for money. In 2003, they earned £3 million. This year, that figure will be touching £15 million. Government subsidy used to account for 80 per cent of the Parks' income. It now makes up 60 per cent. And achieving this has made the Parks far more popular — or crowded, depending on your viewpoint. Approximately 28.7 million visited in 1997; by 2008, that figure had risen to 38 million.

Credit should go to the Parks Foundation, which is what really cracks the fundraising whip. Headed by chocolate heir Joel Cadbury, the Foundation has adopted an enterprising zeal of Bransonesque proportions. From £1,000 plaques for wealthy donors to the "adopt a tree" schemes, evidence of the Foundation's proactive nature is everywhere. Visitors can now acquire a Royal Park "Tree"-shirt, hire an arty deckchair, buy a Parks bag and settle down with a £16 set of stories on Park themes, by the likes of Will Self and Ali Smith. Soon, they will even be able to buy an official Parks picnic hamper at John Lewis.

"Everything is about the bottom line," points out Lady Jennifer Cleaver, of the Friends of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Lady Cleaver sees her role as something of a bulwark against Camley's relentless drive; during her tenure as co-chair, she has seen off a motion to cover the Parade Ground area of Hyde Park with green tarmac. Currently she is opposing the proposal for a tented Olympic camp in Hyde Park. "We do think we have to fight our corner," says Lady Cleaver. "There is no diminishing in the quality of the planting. But some things do threaten the tranquillity of the Parks."

Yet not every money-spinning ruse is grabbed by Camley, who says he turns down almost as many public events as he approves. Picnic hampers at John Lewis is one thing; 10,000 people on fixed stands watching rugby in Regent's Park is another, hence his rejection of Saracens' rugby club's proposal for a three-week residency. He also turned down the idea for a World Cup big screen, not least because the proposed spot in Regent's Park was home for a pair of nesting Little Owls. Plans to charge for parking in the suburban parks have been vetoed by this Government.

Furthermore, not every new notion must make money. The Board has an almost messianic mission to positively enhance "the public experience" of the Parks, particularly if it is linked to the national battle against obesity. At twilight in Hyde Park one can hardly move for bibbed disciples of British Military Fitness doing pull-ups on Rotten Row. There are allotments for school children and a new cottage garden a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace.

But how does that square with the birdwatching walks, the hedgehogs, and the tranquillity enjoyed by those who do not want British Military Fitness, half marathons or contemporary art in their Parks?

Even though she may become Queen of the new art "hub", Peyton-Jones explains what matters in London's green lungs.

"The Parks offer you a way of recalibrating things not defined by monetary value. They are democratic spaces where people can be themselves. We can all breathe here. It is a magical thing."

One only hopes Camley and his team will continue to respect the Royal Parks' magic, as well as count the money.

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