Forbes Apartments is a new-build block that is part of the Royal Arsenal Riverside development.
It is located just east of the Waterfront Leisure Centre along the A206.
The tower was built with a vacant commercial unit on its ground floor, and Chinese restaurant Jincheng Alley wants to open another London branch inside.
The original Jincheng is located at 43 New Oxford Street in the West End.
Kitty Luan, the owner and operator of Jincheng, applied to Greenwich Council to get a premises licence for her second restaurant.
Her application was heard at a meeting of the council’s Licensing Sub-Committee C on Tuesday (July 8).
The application, which sought the granting of a licence for the on and off-sale of alcohol and the playing of recorded music daily between 9am and 10pm, received no objections from police or the council’s environmental health department.
However, several Forbes residents raised objections and spoke at the sub-committee.
Many of them took issue with the potential number of delivery drivers outside the tower block and feared that smells from the restaurant would spread to the rest of the building.
Ms Luan’s legal representative at the meeting was Marcus Lavell who spoke on her behalf throughout.
In response to those concerned about the presence of a restaurant on the ground floor of their tower block, he said: “This entire new-build development is geared around servicing the ground floor commercial units.”
He continued: “It was always going to be something like a restaurant. It will be a restaurant, even without a licence.
“But with a licence, you are looking at shorter operating hours, you’re looking at greater controls as to where staff go and how they manage customers on dispersal.
“You’re looking at a commitment to a dispersal and external management plan, as well as a code of conduct. That’s exactly what the licensing regime is for.”
He also said that the applicant hoped that the “primary customers” of the restaurant would be Forbes residents themselves. Several of these Forbes residents then spoke at the meeting and shared their concerns.
In his written representation Baoqi Zhu considered the “extremely pungent cuisine” of Sichuan food served at Jincheng to be against the licensing objective of the prevention of public nuisance.
At the licensing meeting he brought up the fact that the existing Jincheng restaurant in New Oxford Street has a food hygiene rating of two, but the sub-committee couldn’t take this into account as food hygiene ratings aren’t relevant to the upholding of licensing objectives.
Laura Mason, another Forbes resident, had concerns about how delivery drivers would be managed as Jincheng would be serving takeaway food.
Delivery drivers were something she already considered a “dangerous” issue for Forbes Apartments.
She said: “Our walkways and our entrance gates are already regularly blocked by Deliveroo motorcycles in particular.
“None of them use the parking bays. I’ve lived here four years and none of them use the parking bays unless they’re in a car.”
She also proposed that the air filtration system included within the restaurant plans “is not intended for high grease output, such as wok or deep frying in the Sichuan style of cooking” and feared that it posed a fire safety risk to the apartment block if “overused or poorly maintained”.
Parmela Chohan said that Forbes residents didn’t object to the idea of a restaurant being situated on the ground floor as Mr Lavell suggested, but were objecting to Jincheng because of “the type of food served and cooking methods which pose a fire risk” as well as delivery vehicles, late night footfall and “general customer disturbance.”
Sai Wong feared that the area outside the restaurant would become crowded with customers, residents and delivery drivers, causing the potential for traffic danger due to the building’s proximity to the A206.
In response to the concerns raised by Forbes residents, Mr Lavell said: “We’ve heard a great deal of issues of the fact that there are a large number of residences built above this unit… and it’s close to a roundabout.
“Not one of those things goes to any of the licensing objectives in terms of the licensable activities that take place, that being the sale of alcohol and also the playing of recorded music.”
He also responded to the suggestion that the proposed air filtration system wouldn’t be up to scratch to handle Sichuan cuisine as it is only designed for electric cooking. He said: “We only cook with electricity.
“People have stated we have high intensity cooking. I don’t know what that is. We don’t cook with any greater intensity than any other restaurant might. We only have 49 covers and that’s limited by the licence.”
He also explained that the restaurant’s air filtration system is designed to clear and purify the air in the unit before it joins the rest of the building’s air handling system. “You’re not getting high grease air entering an HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system for the rest of the building”, he said.
When discussing the takeaway driver issues, Mr Lavell suggested that a mandate could be enforced that would see restaurant staff refusing to serve them unless they had parked their vehicles properly.
Having heard representations from both the applicant and the objectors, sub-committee chairman Cllr David Gardner concluded the Jincheng Alley premises licence consideration, stating that the committee would issue its decision within five working days.
