CROYDON IN CRISIS: The one-time shopping mall developer is shapeshifting its business towards residential property, but appears in no hurry to action any of its promises after more than a decade of blight to North End. By our housing correspondent, BARRATT HOLMES
Flats, flats and more flats: Westfield’s latest scheme, so far presented only in cartoon form, could include 3,000 residential ‘units’
Westfield’s plans for Croydon town centre could include as many as 3,000 “residential units” – five times as many flats as the developers proposed originally for the same site when they first submitted a planning application in 2013.
That’s just one of the details to emerge, perhaps reluctantly, as the Paris-based multibillion multinational begins its “year-long programme of engagement” with the residents and businesses of Croydon who they have been royally dicking about for more than a decade.
The Croydon Urban Room, using a couple of vacant retail units in the increasingly empty Whitgift Centre, opened yesterday with cardboard models, some Post-It notes and few hard details of what Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield has in mind for the large site, which includes the old Allders building, the Whitgift Centre itself and Centrale shopping mall just across the pedestrianised road.
What was, 11 years ago, supposed to be a retail scheme with 600 flats tacked on, is now to be mainly flats, with seriously intensified levels of high-rise housing and a few shops scattered around at ground level.
Even by 2018, when Westfield and their erstwhile partners Hammerson last submitted a planning application for a promised £1.4billion regeneration scheme in Croydon town centre, they were suggesting fewer than 1,000 flats, mostly in tower blocks along Wellesley Road.
But that vision, despite a costly – for the local council – Compulsory Purchase exercise and Public Inquiry, was never delivered.
With the retail sector continuing to tank, post-covid Westfield are moving ever more into the housing business, as they have demonstrated with add-on developments at their London supermalls in Stratford and Shepherds Bush.
But nothing quite on the scale that could be coming Croydon’s way.
Don’t get your hopes up too much, though because Westfield don’t appear to be in any burning hurry to deliver anything in Croydon. Representatives at the consultation event are plain that the whole project could take at least 10, probably as long as 15 years to complete.
Back to the drawing board: the year-long engagement comes before any plans are drawn up by architects Allies and Morrison or formal consultation is held
The timescale goes like this: a one-year “engagement” process has just begun. A planning application therefore cannot be expected much before early 2026 (the next local elections are in May that year). The planning approval could then take most of a year before, just as on two occasions in the past, Croydon Council gives Westfield a green light, and is then left waiting while the developers consider whether to act on it or not.
So the earliest start date for demolition work and structural preparations would be late 2027. Those “meanwhile use” “kiosks” (Westfield’s choice of word) that will be going in to the ground floor of the long disused Allders store could be around for a very long time.
If Westfield do ever go ahead with their scheme, it will be a phased project. First, businesses in the Whitgift Centre southern end, if any are left, will be decanted into Centrale. There’s plenty of vacant spaces to accommodate them there, after all.
Then work will begin on about half the Whitgift Centre site, including the Allders building, where we are told that the century-old fascias will be preserved. Indeed, even one 1960s-build office blocks, too, will be preserved, as Westfield want to convert it into flats (even though it has lain vacant for more than a decade).
This is being considered, apparently, because of “carbon benefits from their reuse”, all very laudable, of course, and nothing to do with maximising profits for the developer.
Only once work on that part of the site is complete will demolition work start on the more northerly part of the Whitgift Centre, at the West Croydon end. With more residential “intensification”.
Wide-eyed residents hoping for some long-promised amenities are liable to be disappointed. You can forget the ice rink or swimming pool on your wish list. There might be a patch of open space here or there and a few bars and restaurants at street level. But beyond that… just flats, mostly for open sale, some student accommodation, some shared ownership.
And it seems most unlikely, with the current Mayor at the Town Hall and with the council’s planning department, that anything will be done to ensure that the developers provide any amenities in the way of GP surgeries, school spaces or even sports facilities.
Precious few of the Westfield flats will be “affordable” (which we’ve established is not really affordable at all) or social rent housing. There could be some kind of stand-off coming between the developers and whoever is the next Mayor of London (Sadiq Khan will have been and gone but the time we get to this point): London Plan and Local Plan targets for affordable housing could threaten any scheme’s “commercial viability”.
And by the time that they finish that second phase of the development, it will probably be time to consider demolishing the Centrale centre…
As Inside Croydon reported yesterday, Westfield’s recruitment of 16- to 25-year-old locals to become members of a consultative “NextGen Panel” could be a bittersweet experience, with members of that panel in their 40s by the time any redevelopment is completed.
Change of approach: URW’s revised scheme for the White City saw them pivoting from retail to residential
URW’s online public survey, which went live yesterday, makes no mention whatsoever of homes or housing. In its accompanying Masterplan Framework document, also released yesterday, just a single page of its 102 is devoted to housing provision.
URW says of their Croydon scheme: “The North End Quarter masterplan will see the delivery of a more sustainable and better-connected town centre core through a network of public spaces, green areas and pedestrian-friendly streets.
“The Framework also responds to urgent local housing need through the creation of new homes across a range of different tenures encompassing market sale, build-to-rent, student, co-living, and supported housing, designed to cater to varied demographics and cultivate a multi-generational community…
“The plans will celebrate Croydon’s unique heritage, ensuring that the town’s history, diversity and community spirit are integrated into the redevelopment proposals. The Framework will align and complement with the work underway by Croydon Council to create a Town Centre Regeneration Strategy for the wider town centre area.”
The Urban Room will be open Thu Nov 14 (10am–1pm); Sat Nov 16 (10am–1pm); Tue Nov 19 (10am–1pm); and Thu Nov 21 (2pm–7.30pm).
Read more: Perry allows Westfield to spend £6m ‘fine’ on own interests
Read more: Westfield reveal consultation and more delays on ‘masterplan’
Read more: Westfield boss says Croydon scheme could take 15 more years
Read more: Westfield scale down plans, leaving Croydon a ‘dead duckling’
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Makes sense as in post-covid world offline retail is having huge problems attracting people. It is what it is. Let them build it already, it’s been such a while that we soon going to have an entire generation of people who were born, grew up and finished uni all while this was still in plans.
15 more years for Westfield (or whatever they call themselves this month) to complete the project that they have been sitting on for a decade already? Even Brick by Brick could build some flats in Croydon with a 15 years completion date !
How else is this going to be funded? Any large scale shopping centre regeneration will have the same proposal. I am not saying I like it, or that it’s right not to have other amenities included in the plans, but there isn’t much choice. We can just hope the council insist upon these, although they are illequipped to manage developments like this.
NO more flats / tower blocks for Croydon,,, we are FULL!!!!
I have no problem with the building of more flats, it’s just the sheer concentration, the heights of the buildings, the quality and lack of infrastructure that is the issue with me. Along with lack of social, first time buyer and genuinely affordable housing. It’s also frustrating reading time and again developers justifying the heights of their building plans claiming it’s in line with the trend of Croydon.
This trend belongs in the past, a series of sick mistakes that no longer should continue, building heights should be capped. You’re stood around boozepark in a sunny day and you’re stuck in the shade, a total eyesore blocking your vision. No matter how much the Council and Councillors bend over backwards for this boa constrictor of a company it could all end up being academic if Jules Pipe comes along and decides the housing arrangement is unacceptable, then back to square one for another few years.
In this neverending story where Croydon just seems to be a horse sinking in the mud I can’t help thinking that once bitten, twice shy, three times the fool, ending up more Lionel Poorie than Lionel Richie.
Cherry Orchard Road feels claustrophobic as developers were allowed to put tower blocks on both sides. And when you get to the top, you have the Bridge to Nowhere. Heather Cheesbrough as been a disaster for Croydon and will no doubt screw this up as she has everything else she’s touched. The blight of the town centre started when she was appointed. We need someone leading planning and regeneration who knows what they are doing, has some common sense, and actually cares about the borough, its residents and its challenges. Not just their developer mates.