Light Bar Saved!

The Light Bar, a Shoreditch High Street institution housed in a 19th-century building on the cusp of Norton Folgate and long threatened by the burgeoning waistline of the City as it expands northwards, has been saved from destruction. Hammersons, developer of the £500 million Bishops Place project, had wanted to raze the former electricity substation and replace it with a 51-storey Norman Foster-designed skyscraper, but they have now acquiesced to calls for the building to be retained; it is included in a new "challenging revision plan" for the site. The developer is spinning this as a tale of community munificence, but local campaigners Open Shoreditch say they were in fact stymied by the recession, and that they'll continue fighting for residents to have a say in the new proposal.