This Saturday will be your last chance to enjoy a decent cup of coffee, maybe a sandwich or a bit of cake, in what claims to be the best café in the Whitgift Centre.
Shutting up shop: the Camden Coffee House closes on March 2
The Camden Coffee House has announced it will cease trading in the Whitgift Centre on March 2.
The café, part of a small chain, has operated in Croydon’s biggest shopping centre for 10 years. The management confirmed the closure, blaming deteriorating trading conditions in the centre.
The café’s three staff are all to be redeployed at other branches.
“The whole Whitgift management is driving me, and many others, to despair,” according to one trader in the increasingly empty shopping mall, now under the management of Westfield.
The closure of Camden Coffee House is “another nail in the coffin for the Whitgift”, a source said. Many are questioning whether the Whitgift Centre can recover from the closure at the end of last year of Sainsbury’s, one of the centre’s original tenants and the mall’s only dedicated groceries supermarket.
According to someone closely associated with the café, “This place was an oasis of calm for a lot of people, and was probably the best coffee shop in Croydon. How long until the whole centre closes down?”
Sources close to the business say that there has been a sharp decline in visitors to the Whitgift Centre, while they have suffered with faulty and non-operating escalators and long-standing repair works using scaffolding around the centre, which has been off-putting for customers.
“If it wasn’t for out long-standing, loyal customers, we might have closed down a long time ago,” said a source.
Camden Coffee is the latest of a series of exits of traders from the shopping centre, which was earmarked for redevelopment by Westfield and the land-owners, the Whitgift Foundation, 12 years ago.
Last week, Croydon’s Mayor, Jason Perry, was acting as a cheerleader for Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, parroting their propaganda about “12 new signings” for stores across the Whitgift and Centrale shopping malls, claiming “demand from occupiers is at an ‘all-time high'”… except one of the dozen was a relocation of an existing tenant, and at least two were “pop-ups” of social enterprises which pay little, if any rent.
“Exciting times ahead for Croydon,” regurgitated Perry, like some craven ventriloquist dummy with Westfield’s hand stuck up his arse.
“I love Croydon, but where is the much-promised strategy for the Whitgift Centre?
“Or is it simply death by a thousand closures?
“All the businesses that brought character to the centre are being wiped out. Soon there’ll be no point in visiting the centre at all. Who is responsible for deciding the future of this place? Where is it going? By 2025 there’ll be tumbleweed drifting by the empty units of the Whitgift…”.
Jason Perry’s term as Mayor of Croydon ends in May 2026
Read more: Westfield boss says Croydon scheme could take 15 more years
Read more: Whitgift Centre ever-present Sainsbury’s opts to shut up shop
Read more: What will the ‘new’ Westfield deal really mean for Croydon?
Read more: Centrale’s owners set to sell-up to Westfield in cut-price deal
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