CROYDON IN CRISIS: Shopping centre managers have gone ahead with the closure of the old Allders car park – making it even more difficult for people to visit the increasingly dilapidated venue
Ghost town: there’s probably a reason there are fewer shoppers visiting the Whitgift Centre…
The management of the Whitgift Centre has ignored appeals from traders – its tenants – and closed off the entrance to the Allders car park, and with it the pedestrian access to parts of the long-neglected shopping centre, and the few businesses that remain there.
Business owners in the Whitgift Centre only discovered the intention to shut off the car park by accident, when signs were placed in the car park barely a week before the May 31 cut-off date. The management of the shopping mall, now owned by Unibail Rodamco Westfield, did not even bother to provide advance warning to affected businesses – their tenants and clients.
One trader told Inside Croydon that they were “incandescent with rage”, because despite assurances from the centre’s managers that there would be new signage to indicate a pedestrian walkway and added security, including guard dogs at night, none of those promises have been kept.
Allders, the flagship department store of a shopping centre which was once the pride of Croydon, has been closed for more than a decade. But shoppers and town centre visitors still used the car park, and pedestrians used its entrances as a means to access the stores, bars, restaurants and other amenities that are hanging on, despite the constant fall in visitor numbers to the centre.
In 2012, Westfield were announced as developers for a £1.4billion project in Croydon town centre which would include a new shopping mall, offices and hundreds of new homes. It was due to be completed by 2017.
Hostile environment: dumped litter, closed entrances, and an empty car park, around the back of what was once the pride of Croydon
But not a brick has been laid, nor any part of the 1960s-built Whitgift Centre demolished, as the mall has been allowed to slowly decay, driving away many of its shops, and customers.
Shutting off some of the remaining businesses from public access by closing the Allders car park without providing a safe, well-lit walkway is feared will deter even more customers from visiting.
The walkway through the car park is, it is now suggested, to remain open for another month.
Angela Ferrara, who has run Bishop’s Wine Bar for 13 years, says that they were given no notification of the closure of the adjoining car park, and only found out when the bar’s window cleaner pointed out the signs.
“This bar has been here since 1982, it looks like it won’t be for much longer, as what little footfall we do get will be destroyed,” Ferrara told Inside Croydon last month.
Barriers to the car park entrance went in at the weekend.
“The car park is now closed,” Ferrara said.
No through road: it is as if the Whitgift Centre management wants to make it as difficult as possible to visit the centre
“There is a little door around the corner through which you can still gain egress and exit to our level, but which has absolutely no indicators of its existence, inside or out.”
Ferrara had been told by the shopping centre managers that there would be signage in place. She is now going to install her own signs.
“There has been precisely none of the promised security or guard dogs,” she said.
Even at weekends, the Whitgift Centre is no longer staying open until its supposed closing time of 7pm – an important detail for hospitality businesses such as Bishop’s. “It seems to be that they close whenever they feel like it,” Ferrara said.
“The surface car park is, as always, empty. The once busy Allders car park is now, as you would expect, empty.”
Customers have already been cancelling bookings at the wine bar because they have been unable to navigate their way through the shopping centre’s increasingly hostile and off-putting environment.
On Sunday, Ferrera observed: “Footfall into the centre today has been a fraction of what it was, and this is only day one of this insanity.
“I’m incandescent with rage.”
Jason Perry, Croydon’s part-time Mayor, and the council have remained silent on this matter.
Read more: Businesses on the brink as Whitgift Centre set to close car park
Read more: Much-loved Whitgift Centre café to shut down on Saturday
Read more: Barwell, Brexit and Croydon’s troubled Westfield dream
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