London's reputation as a romantic destination for lovers of art and style will hang in the balance this Valentine's Day, as the deadline passes for public responses to a scheme to safeguard the look and traditions of Mayfair and St James's against the influx of rich foreign residents.
The two grand, chiefly Georgian-built areas of the capital are a big draw for tourists and daytrippers, fanning out around Cork Street, renowned for its art galleries and salesrooms, and around Savile Row, for many years the heart of Britain's bespoke tailoring industry.
The quarter near Piccadilly and the Royal Academy of Arts has often served as a literary backdrop, featuring in the escapades of PG Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster and, before that, in the works of Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle. But Mayfair and St James's flamboyant character is shrinking due to high business rates and low commercial returns.
Alarm in the art world reached a new pitch in 2012, when seven galleries on Cork Street were given notice to leave their premises within a year. Their landlord, the British insurance company Standard Life Investments, has since drawn up a £90m deal with property developer Native Land for a development which would see 42 flats built above a shopping arcade. Designed by Richard Rogers's architectural firm, Rogers Sirk Harbour and Partners, it was approved in principle by Westminster city council last summer. The plan does now offer some reserved space for commercial galleries, but the art dealers of Cork Street remain unsettled. A second development on the other side of Cork Street proposed by the major Mayfair landlord Pollen Estate threatens the future of a further three galleries in 2015.
"I am an angry old man," said veteran gallerist Leslie Waddington of Waddington Custot, who will be 80 next month. "Cork Street has been built up over the years and relies on a mix of different galleries. We are the victims of a kind of commercial fascism, where those making decisions based on profit feel they are unaccountable."
There are thought to be 85 art dealers in Mayfair, with around 75 in St James's, contributing more than £7.5bn a year to the economy and indirectly supporting tens of thousands of jobs.
Sir Norman Rosenthal, a former director of the Royal Academy, said that he fears for the character of central London. "The nature of these areas is changing, whether it is Savile Row or Cork Street. The point of Cork Street was that it offered quality British art, the best of the middle-of-the-road work, and that is important to the art trade and to the city." Recent figures point to a similar property development squeeze on creative industries in Soho and the West End, where the cost of office space for media companies has risen by 15% in the last year.
One of the seven Mayfair galleries directly affected by the Native Land development, along with French painting specialists Stoppenbach and Delestre and the bulldozed Alpha Gallery, is The Mayor Gallery, a saleroom that first established Cork Street as a centre for the art trade in 1925.
During a court battle with the developers last year, James Mayor pointed out that these galleries launched the careers of the greatest modern British painters: Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and David Hockney. The Mayor Gallery was the first to show the work of Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Joan Miró and Paul Klee in this country and was pivotal to the art movement Unit One, set up in 1933 by Paul Nash with his fellow British artists Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson.
Mayor believes efforts to turn the area into a lucrative residential zone are "absurd". "This part of Mayfair has not been residential for well over 100 years (unless you call brothels residential)," he objected last year in a high court statement.
"The proposed flats will most probably be sold off plan to foreigners who will spend very little time in occupation. Getting rid of the existing commercial office space will have a substantial negative impact on the many cafes, pubs and small restaurants in Cork Street and the immediate vicinity. This will, in turn, kill off the life of the area."
A Save Cork Street petition launched in 2012 was supported by the comedian Graham Norton, actor Bill Nighy, retail guru Mary Portas, novelist Alan Hollinghurst and book illustrator Quentin Blake and went on to win wide public support.
The planning permission that was eventually granted by Westminster called for the developers to reserve some spaces for art dealers and Native Land's chief executive, Alasdair Nicholls, promised the proposals would "greatly enhance Cork Street and the experience of visiting one of London's most established art gallery districts, by both augmenting the gallery offering of the building and creating an arcade with a permanent dedicated space for young and emerging artists".
Last month Westminster put forward fresh measures to protect galleries in Mayfair, suggesting that a "special policy area" be created around Cork Street, Bond Street, Albemarle Street and Dover Street.
A consultation document to be reviewed next month asked for reactions to the idea of extending the protection already given to parts of St James's into the Cork Street area. Welcomed by gallery owners so far, the plan is likely to be less popular with property owners.
