London mayor Boris Johnson is to outline four potential scenarios for how Heathrow could be redeveloped into a new district providing up to 100,000 jobs and homes for as many as 200,000 people.
He will step up his campaign for a new hub airport in the Thames estuary today by publishing a report showing how the site occupied by Heathrow could be transformed to meet the capital’s growing housing and employment needs.
The options assessed by property consultants Jones Lang LaSalle include turning Heathrow into an education quarter, generating 100,000 jobs.
Other options could see the construction of as many as 80,000 homes, providing housing for 180,000-200,000 people, and the creation of 90,000 jobs.
Daniel Moylan, the mayor’s chief aviation adviser, said the report will disprove claims that Heathrow would turn into a desolate waste ground if London’s aviation hub is shifted to the other side of the capital, where there is more space for expansion.
The airport directly employs more than 76,000 people and the airport’s bosses have warned the area could be devastated for 20 years as it takes time for regeneration projects to come to fruition.
Rob Gray, from the Back Heathrow campaign group, told The Telegraph that the closure of Heathrow would be like a “death knell” to the economy of west London.
He said: “When the London Docks closed in the 1970s, 150,000 jobs were lost and it took 40 years to create 120,000 new ones.
“Promising people a job in 2055 is of little use to those struggling to pay their bills in 2015.”
The Airports Commission has ordered further studies into the feasibility of a new hub airport in the Thames estuary and will decide in September whether it should be added to a shortlist of options to improve aviation capacity in the southeast of England, which include a third runway at Heathrow and a second runway at Gatwick.