The civic role of a new town hall

Welcome to the developer podcast, where we talk about how to make cities worth living in, which often has to do with the spaces between the buildings as much as the buildings themselves. I'm Christine Murray, founding editor in chief of the developer and Director of The Festival of Place. Our ambition is to break down silos and bring people together to unpick what makes places that thrive. Today, we're talking about the role of a town hall. How do these buildings function as the civic heart of UK places? And given the chance to redo one, what would we change? Your town hall in Brixton is a mixed use project to breathe new life into the town hall and council offices while adding affordable housing and upgrading historic sites and public spaces. I'm joined by James Stockdale, development director at Muse. Hi, Christine. Thank you for having me. My name is James Stockdale. I'm a development director at Muse Places, based out of our London office, in Soho. I've been at Muse for about eight years. Prior to that, I was at another, developer known as, Saint Malvern for over ten years. So plenty of experience in, bringing forward mixed use, complex, long term, multi phased, placemaking, schemes across the country. I think my role covers the complete cycle, really, from from bidding and winning new business through to agreeing and documenting deal structures, obviously working alongside my colleagues within the the Muse team, pointing design teams, planning, delivery. We have a legal in house team. We have a in house sales and marketing team and aftercare, estate management. So, yeah, working closely with all parties and our partners, obviously. Working at Muse Places is more about partnership working. So, I cross probably all areas of the, the the development cycle as part of the delivery of our of our projects. And what do you like best about all those different things that you do? Oh, do you like best? Yeah. I mean, I think I think for me, it's it's seeing the final delivery and seeing them being used both to people, you know, interacting. And, yeah, I I I get very proud going back to, projects. And and to be honest, are you showing my family, my my mother, my father, my brothers? And, yeah. You know, this is this is what I do, and I think, yeah, I'm I'm very proud, and I'm lucky to work at Muse and and be able to do that. So we're gonna talk about a project that that we're we're going to visit it with you. We're gonna do your favorite thing kind of right now, which is your new town hall project in Brixton. Can you tell me a little bit about this project, what it encompasses, and a little bit about, you know, I guess, the starting point, which would be, you know, what was there before, and what was the ambition for this project? Yeah. Of course. …