CROYDON IN CRISIS: After being crushed by developer blight for more than a decade, the town centre faces an even longer wait for the big reveal of Paris-based multi-national’s latest proposals. By STEVEN DOWNES
Long wait: Westfield’s promised supermall never got off the drawing board of multi-national developers and ‘regeneration practitioners’
It could be more than a year before Westfield finally gets around to unveiling its long-promised “masterplan” for Croydon town centre – more than two years later than first promised and more than a decade since the multi-national shopping centre developers first promised a £1.4billion regeneration for the area.
That’s according to the most recent announcement from Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, issued this morning about its latest lip-service exercise, a public consultation for its redevelopment plans for the Whitgift Centre and Centrale.
It was 2012 when Westfield were first unveiled as prospective developers, with what was then a pretty conventional, 20th Century-style mixed development of retail, hospitality and some residential. It was all due to be completed by 2017.
Exciting!: but don’t hold your breath…
Planning applications were submitted, and duly rubber-stamped by the pliant local council, in 2014 and 2018 (when Westfield wanted to double the number of flats in its scheme, to almost 1,000). But never was a brick laid nor a spade dug into the ground, despite costly public inquiries and Compulsory Purchase Order exercises.
Paris-based URW pulled the plug on its Croydon plans early in the pandemic, only to return to the borough promising a new blueprint in 2023. That promise included the troubling caveat that any scheme would probably not be finished until 2038.
Now, even that is beginning to look optimistic, as URW are going on a go-slow that makes the building of the Sagrada Familia appear slick and speedy. At the current rate of progress, HS2 will have long been completed, and all the way to Manchester, by the time this lot get round to delivering on their promises.
In an announcement about their public consultation on the plans, URW said today: “This initial phase… closes on Friday 29 November and is the start of a year-long programme of engagement to help shape the plans before planning application is submitted”. Our italics. This suggests nothing formal will be brought forward before December 2025.
This is no matter of interpretation. Elsewhere in URW’s public offerings they state: “This Masterplan Framework has been prepared by URW in collaboration with Croydon Council to establish the fundamentals of the project before the design and planning application is developed…
“This initial phase… is the first of a series of public consultation activities on the Masterplan which will run throughout 2025, helping to shape the plans before a planning application is submitted.” Again, our italics. Which sounds as if there won’t be a revised planning application next year, now, either.
But at least URW does have their own, swanky name for Croydon’s town centre, which the sharp-suited execs have decided to call “the North End Quarter”.
“URW ownership includes the Whitgift Centre, Allders and Centrale, which make up the larger portion of the North End Quarter, as defined by Croydon Council’s emerging local plan. We are pleased to be working in collaboration with the Whitgift Foundation, as freeholder of much of our ownership to the East of North End,” today’s announcement stated.
“Since consolidating our ownership, we have been supporting the ongoing operations of the shopping centres, working with community groups, Croydon Council and the BID to bring meanwhile use and activations to the town centre.”
This is the same “Scrooge” business that has blocked a Croydon community choir from singing carols in the Whitgift Centre to raise funds for local charities. And it is the same business that has hiked car parking charges while closing the Allders car park – against the wishes of their own tenants. That must be what they mean by “working with community groups”.
They say: “We have now begun the next step in the journey preparing an initial ‘Masterplan Framework’ for public consultation.
“The Masterplan Framework is a tool for discussion and consensus; and a roadmap for change, addressing the challenges of the past and embracing the opportunities of the future. This consultation is an opportunity to explore the draft framework and share your thoughts.”
All change: a decade ago, most of this was going to be redeveloped into retail. Residential development is likely to figure more prominently in any new plan
They might save us all a bit of time and themselves a bit of money if they ever bothered dusting off the “thoughts” from the previous occasions they ran similar exercises, and then largely ignored them.
“The Masterplan Framework is designed to guide the transformation of the entire… area. This comprehensive approach will ensure a cohesive vision and a well-integrated development that benefits the whole community.” Promises, promises…
They are using some of the many vacant retail units in the Whitgift Centre for the purpose, what they call the Urban Room (units 161-162, Whitgift Centre, Croydon CR0 1UQ), with a launch on Tuesday November 12, “alongside an online survey, with further opportunities to engage over the coming months including a Next Gen Youth Panel and Community Workshops”.
This “phase” of the public consultation lasts less than a month, which given that Westfield have been keeping the people of Croydon waiting for more than 12 years, might appear a little on the abrupt side.
In common with so many lip-service consultations and public engagements, the limited opening times suggest that the organisers have no conception about what passes for normal working hours. Or maybe that is quite deliberate.
The Urban Room will be open Tue Nov 12 November from 2pm to 7.30pm; Thu Nov 14 (10am–1pm); Sat Nov 16 (10am–1pm); Tue Nov 19 (10am–1pm); and Thu November 21 (2pm–7.30pm).
URW says that there are more details on their website, URWCroydon.com, but we’ve looked, and there really isn’t. Westfield appear to want to keep us waiting (again) until next month.
- Inside Croydon invites all our readers to contact us with their thoughts, ideas and suggestions about how they believe Croydon town centre can be regenerated successfully, and what they make of Westfield’s own proposals. Just email us at inside.croydon@btinternet.com, with “WESTFIELD” in the subject field, and we will sift through and publish the most interesting and inspired submissions.
Read more: Perry allows Westfield to spend £6m ‘fine’ on own interests
Read more: Planning and tax changes might suit delayed Westfield scheme
Read more: Westfield boss says Croydon scheme could take 15 more years
Read more: Westfield scale down plans, leaving Croydon a ‘dead duckling’
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
So Westfield (or whatever they are calling themselves this month) have been stalling on the Central Croydon ghost town since 2012, when London last hosted the Olympic Games? Will anything be complete by the NEXT time London hosts the Olympics ?!
Comparing construction times with Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia are seemingly appropriate, but at least the underlying purpose of the development did not change.
The Whitgift redevelopment set out as a Cathedral of Shopping and is morphing into the standard Croydon high rise tower block with a little bits of things on the side, but is this really what is required for the needs of Croydon. The path of least resistance to whatever the Developers want is all that is provided with these never ending tinkerings to the Masterplan. Haven’t we reached the point that a single Masterplan for this site is now inappropriate and for the sake of sanity that a mega developement that is not going to happen anytime in the next decade is finally abandoned and more piecemeal redevelopment is set upon to finally move on from this blight of two decades now.
The demand for shopping malls has slumped, so let’s not delude ourselves that a Westfield on the scale of Stratford or Shepherds Bush is ever going to happen here.
The Council should compulsorily purchase the Whitgift Centre, demolish the insides and the car parks and create a town centre green space in the middle. That’ll revitalise North End and breathe life back into Centrale.
They can then build some high quality social housing on the eastern edge along a narrower, tree-lined Wellesley Road; we don’t need this ridiculous American-style multi-lane high-speed freeway, just something more suited to the volume of traffic using it.
scrap the plans all together, give us back proper shops actually on North End….. shopping centres dont fit the model of shopping anymore .. get rid of the “tat” cheap shops …..
The last 30 years of retail economics have sort of passed you by, haven’t they?
Please excuse my ignorance on this subject but I am fairly late in coming to this saga, but is it not the usual way just to get rid of a non performing contractor and find a new one. I am guessing that the contractor has some huge leverage over the council preventing their removal, please enlighten me
What we find disappointing about such comments, Haydn, is that despite a decade or more’s coverage in which we have painstakingly laid out the various relationships between freeholders and leaseholders, developers and landowners, the very notion that the council is in some way commissioning Westfield to undertake this work still persists.
They. Are. Not.
Croydon Council, as Jason Perry has ably demonstrated in getting nothing done despite his manifesto promises about the state of the town centre, are mere bystanders in this whole affair. Their only role is to act as the quasijudicial planning authority, provided some guidance to the private developers and landowners. That our council, red and blue, has instead behaved like cheerleaders for the scheme, rather than as critical friends, acting in the interests of *all* Croydon’s residents and businesses, may be part of the explanation for the situation we are now in.
The Whitgift Foundation is the landowner, freeholders of much of the property.
Westfield are the developers that the Foundation invited in (then with the leaseholders’ choice, Hammerson) some 12 years ago.
That Westfield have been allowed to call the shots over the development is a matter that needs to be taken up with the Whitgift Foundation and its property agents, Stiles Harold Williams – who share common directors with Croydon BID and Develop Croydon, and who also act as agents in respect of the sale and leasing of council properties. You may detect a serious conflict of interest in there somewhere…
I read fron a post on Facebook:
“Today’s Guardian. Whitgift isn’t the only one. Bolton, Lincoln, Bradford. Salford, Greenock, Bootle Strand, etc etc. approx 60 of the UK’s 500 larger shopping centres are up for razing.”
My opinion is that they need to be turned into Entertainment Venues that can provide pop concerts, indoor sports, award shows, conventions, business and educational seminars. The Whitgift Centre alone is 1,500,000 square foot of space going to waste. If the remaining tenant stores would move into Centrale, which has more than enough space, some would follow and some would shut down and redevelopment could start.
URW and the Council need to create a vision of the town as a destination town for entertainment and socializing in South London, NOT Retail shopping as that is OVER. They’ll have to work with private finance to change the town by hiring private security to help the police with law and order and building facilities for housing the mentally ill, homeless and addicts.
Then they can oversee the opening of plenty of bars, restaurants and cafes and playcentres for families and teenagers. Croydon needs a day and night life. Nobody goes out at night in Croydon anymore since 10 years ago. Young people need affordable places to go out and be sociable as well as youth hubs so they can be creative and constructive as well.
The council should start by attracting investors to buy back the space that was St George’s Walk and getting them to build an concert venue. Give people a central place to go out to! The land there covers 250,000 SQUARE FEET (excluding the Nestle Tower), capable of holding 10,000 easily! If we had the Council and URW had the will and skill to negotiate this, then Croydon would move forward.
As commented elsewhere, the Whitgift Centre is not a council scheme. Never was. Never will be.
But as you identify correctly, there is a massive hole in the middle of the town centre, not only along North End but where St George’s Walk and the Nestle Tower once stood/stands rotting.
If we consider that Westfield is a massive problem for Croydon, the fate of the near-bankrupt R&F Properties is an even greater one, and one that has been worth barely a mention from our “businessman” Mayor, Jason Perry.
High Street retailing was in trouble 25 years ago, so the original concept of knocking down one shopping centre and building a new, bigger, shinier one was already out-dated by 2012. But whether another massive entertainment venue – after the Dome, Wembley, Tottenham Stadium, and every other theatre and performance space in this city – is viable is a matter of some dispute. The Croydon Arena concept – where Ruskin Square and Boozepark now stand – was rejected after a public inquiry 20 years ago.
What has long become clear, though, is that Croydon Council is completely out of its depth in dealing with multi-national developers on multi-billion schemes. It was Boris Johnson, when Mayor of London, who got Croydon into bed with Westfield. The time has long past when the GLA needs to step in and intervene to help resolve the rotting mess that is Croydon town centre.
Quite sad that we sit in this all or nothing position, of a new shiny utopian shopping centre (that we all know is undeliverable), or putting up with the rotting corpse of a town centre that is reminiscent to me of dystopian ‘hamsterdam’ from HBO’s The Wire. For those who don’t follow what I mean here, the police in a crime ridden city chose to ignore parts of the town much like what is happening here for very different reasons.
That said, the lack of inventiveness to even suggest piecemeal change to the town centre only confirms it’s fate for me. One that Sainsbury’s did not even want to be a part of as it was cheaper to continue to pay rent and not be in occupation, than it was to have more than their profit margin pilfered by the demographic that have now taken over the town centre.
Time for action. But let’s not hold our breath.
Sad times.
It’s never going to happen