CROYDON IN CRISIS: Westfield wants to make alterations to the fascia of Allders, as Jason Perry gets over-excited about seven ‘kiosks’.
By STEVEN DOWNES
Artwashing: the best Westfield has had to offer the Allders site in the last decade has been some colourful hoardings
“Too little, too late.”
That was the response from residents when Mayor Jason Perry pulled a stunt last night to announce via his personal social media that, finally, after keeping Croydon waiting for more than 12 years, Westfield were actually going to do something about the town centre.
Don’t get too excited, though.
This isn’t the promised £1.4billion regeneration that the developers, now Paris-based Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, have been promising Croydon since 2012. No, this will be some make-do-and-mend pop-ups (yes, more pop-ups) on the ground floor of the long-disused Allders department store on North End.
To underline the temporary, even the developers’ own planning documents refer to what they propose as “kiosks”.
For any small sign of real, substantive development, the people of Croydon have got to wait for at least another six months, before URW get around to unveiling their next “masterplan” (their third, at least, by iC’s reckoning), and we all embark on the whole planning application farrago all over again.
Ready to leave Croydon: Westfield’s Scott Parsons (centre) and Adam Smith (right) seem pleased when their taxi driver arrives to take them home
Perry, Croydon’s £82,000 per year executive Mayor, obviously lacks a little excitement in his life. Because what he revealed on Twatter last night is “exciting news for Croydon”, as he slipped the announcement out just before 10pm on a Thursday evening.
“Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield has submitted a planning application to transform the old Allders building into vibrant pop-ups.” Yes. “Vibrant“. We nearly spilt our Ovaltine when we read it, we were sooo excited.
According to piss-poor Perry, “This proposal includes refurbishing and modifying the ground floor shop frontage to accommodate five retail units and two food and beverage units.”
Yep, that’s it: seven new units, on the outside of a shopping centre which has been dying on its arse for a decade. What we’re actually looking at here is a small-scale version of Boozepark.
But according to Perry, “The proposed development is set to bring a fresh, dynamic atmosphere back to the High Street.” “Fresh”. And “Dynamic”.
Set to change: Westfield want to make changes to Allders’ fascia
These seven units – kiosks – will, according to Perry, be essential to “restoring a sense of place and pride to our community”. Of course, there wouldn’t be any need to restore pride to the community if the fuckwits running Croydon Council in 2012 (and since) had not prostrated themselves in front of Westfield and allowed them to treat Croydon with complete contempt.
And who was the council cabinet member for development back in 2012? Yes, you’ve guessed it… piss-poor Perry.
“We hope to see this transformation…”, Ha! “Transformation“? Perry should be arrested for abusing the English language, “… begin early next year, providing a fantastic opportunity for local businesses to thrive.”
Unlike the current situation, where many of the long-standing traders in the Whitgift Centre, where Westfield are now in charge, have given up, packed up and gone home.
“This initiative is part of our ongoing partnership with [URW] aimed at bringing positive change to Croydon,” Perry wrote.
Perry appears to be showing signs of Stockholm Syndrome, such is his complete, unquestioning devotion to the multi-national, multi-billion-dollar development firm that has been holding the borough hostage for more than a decade. The involvement of URW, according to Perry, “is critical to our regeneration efforts”.
Yeah, Jase, but not in a good way, eh?
It is odd that none of this has been announced through the formal, council publicity channels – website, nothing; Twitter account, nil; press release, nada.
And we have all been here before, of course.
Among Perry’s series of broken promises – to “fix the finances”, to recover Jo Negrini’s “golden handshake”, to bring to justice those who crashed the council’s finances – it is now two years since he announced a previous “meanwhile use” for Allders. A special entertainment “immersive experience”, from the bloke behind Secret Cinema was going to open in autumn 2022. The company behind the scheme went into liquidation a few months later, not a single ticket for a single show ever being sold.
So the online reaction of residents to Perry’s latest big announcement suggests that people are seeing through the plastic guttering salesman’s spiel.
“It’s too little, too late,” was the response of a couple of people.
Planning docs: Westfield submitted their planning application in July
“The ‘partnership’ with URW has destroyed Croydon,” another observed, astutely.
And another respondent on Faustbook saw through the gushing praise, and looked at the details: “It doesn’t look much more than a few temp use shops in the front of Allders.
“If I remember correctly, there are already quite a few empty and deteriorating shops either side of WH Smith. There’s also the old HMV site, assuming it’s still empty. Why not tidy those up try and make those viable for temporary reuse and leave Allders until you are ready to do something properly with the whole town centre?”
That would be the sort of question Inside Croydon could put to Scott Parsons, the chief operating officer for Westfield in Britain. But he refuses to grant us an interview.
It might also be the sort of question that could legitimately be put to Mayor Jason Perry. But he probably wouldn’t know the answers.
Read more: Hammer blow for Whitgift Centre with new delay to masterplan
Read more: Millionaire pulls plug on Mayor Perry’s ‘big idea’ for Allders
Read more: Tories warn residents: don’t be ‘negative’ about Allders murals
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