With not a moment to lose, KEN TOWL dashed down to the Whitgift Centre to try to discover what the multi-national developers might have in store for the town centre, amid their models made of cereal packets and design briefs scribbled on Post-It notes
A treasure trove of delights?: Or more a collection of badly made Blue Peter-style models and signs with glib generalisations
Early this century, I was working at a pupil referral unit in the north of the borough. A PRU is a school for pupils that have been excluded from the school system, either temporarily or permanently. Our job was to provide them with an education and try to reintegrate some of them back into the mainstream.
Dreamscape: a sign in the Urban Room, managing to patronise and over-promise simultaneously
I was invited by Croydon Council to take a handful of our pupils to the Hilton Hotel on Purley Way so that these “hard-to-reach children” could be consulted, along with a hundred or so others, on their vision for the future of Croydon. They were being consulted, not something they were familiar with.
There were several activities, many of them centred round what the young people wanted in their “endz”. A consensus emerged by the end of the day. These kids knew what they wanted: staffed youth clubs that could provide them with a safe place to go and something to do in the evenings.
The council has asked those without a voice and they have spoken, I thought. My younger self kept his optimistic eyes and ears open, looking forward to the announcement of a raft of youth clubs across the borough. Of course, it didn’t happen. It was almost as if the whole consultation had been an exercise in virtue signalling, of compliance with some or other nationally imposed democracy metric.
I am 20 years older now and, if not wiser, I am a fuck lot more cynical.
Town planning: some poor two-year-old is missing the building blocks from their toy box
This week, I attended another sort of consultation, the North End Quarter Masterplan Framework “engagement”, staged by shopping centre developers Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield in collaboration with Croydon Council.
The promise of development of the Whitgift Centre and Centrale – or the “NEQ”, as the council insists on calling it now – into something bigger and better and newer has been hanging over the town centre for what feels like a generation and, as the years have ticked by, retailers have pulled out of the centre of town and left Croydon looking a bit tired and run down.
The public engagement is based in the Croydon Urban Room in a couple of vacant retail units tucked behind WH Smith in what used to be the thriving, bustling Whitgift Centre.
The Urban Room comprises two rooms connected by a winding stairway. Downstairs is the domain of the council, upstairs that of Westfield. There was a security guard patrolling outside, hardly inviting. Were they taking precautions that someone might run off with their new plans?
I entered at the public sector level and was pretty much left alone by the council staff that were present to have a look round. I was drawn to a sign with a question on it: “What is an Urban Room?”
Great! Super!: the condescension goes off the scale
I mean, I know what urban means, and I know what a room is, so I was intrigued to see how the council could expend three paragraphs explaining these common and everyday terms. Apparently, an urban room “is defined as a physical space for exploring the past, investigating the present and imagining the future of a local area or neighbourhood”.
Really? Defined by whom? Not Websters, not Collins, not the Oxford English Dictionary.
It got worse. “The ideas, conversations and strategies developed in the Croydon Urban Room,” it said, “will develop clear priorities for the future of the North End Quarter and the wider town centre.” Would they?
Would the “ideas developed” develop priorities? Did any of it make sense if no one was saying a word? And if anyone said anything, would it be recorded and presented to a decision-maker at the council, or someone with real power at Westfield? Who knew?
The third paragraph backtracked a bit. The idea was to “increase access and understanding of the planning process, focusing specifically on underrepresented communities”. So a heady mix of condescension and patronising.
How were they going to reach hard-to-reach people with that sort of middle-class corporate babble?
I was reminded of the characters Tony Webster and David Harris Jones, the “Great!” and “Super!” sycophants who worked on marketing at Sunshine Desserts alongside Reginald Perrin in the 1970s sitcom. Might there be a Tony Webster and David Harris Jones employed somewhere in Croydon Council, whose actual job was to churn out this meaningless guff?
It got worse. Another poster in the Urban Room was emptily aspirational.
“Through conversations, stories, exhibitions and events, the Croydon Urban Room will bring together the views of those who live, work and visit the area, to develop clear priorities to steer the town centre’s recovery.”
Were we really going to be able to “steer the town centre’s recovery” through story-telling and exhibitions? This sounded like magic.
It got worse. On a table were some glazed clay sculptures of what looked more like chocolate eclairs than buildings. We were verging on Willy Wonka territory now.
Fancy a chocolate eclair?: how central Croydon might look if built by Willie Wonka
It got worse. There was a post-it note with “BUILD YOUR DREAM BUILDING!” scrawled on it next to some pale blue and dark brown wooden blocks and cylinders, and a couple of tubs of Playdoh. It all looked rather sad. In Croydon, we dream small.
On the wall, a poster invited me to “Place a sticker from the adjacent toolkit on the map to tell us what you would like to see and where!”
There was, unfortunately, no adjacent toolkit.
What if I wanted to see, say, an ice rink where WH Smith is now? Would it happen if I placed a sticker on the map (assuming I could find a toolkit)? I wanted to believe it.
“What do you imagine and dream about for the future of the town centre?” asked another poster.
Below it, someone had placed a painting of an olive branch and the words “Croydon4Palestine”. Someone else wanted the tram network to be extended to Coulsdon.
Once I had looked at everything in the downstairs section, one of the council people approached me. It might have been Tony Webster. Great! Maybe it was David Harris-Jones. Super!
I asked him if all of the opinions and requests that adorned the walls would be taken into account in the creation of the development. He spoke to me for about five minutes, iterating and reiterating just how important it was to collect people’s views and how, upstairs, Westfield were also collecting views (and, presumably, stories) which would inform their final proposal for the town. “Great!” I said, “Super!”
I legged it up the stairs.
Fantasy planning: if only Ken Towl could have found the ‘toolbox’, or a sticker, Croydon might be getting an ice rink. Or then again, maybe not
The difference between the austere brown public sector scrappiness of the council’s lower floor and the corporate smoothness above was profound. There was fruit and soft drinks on offer here. There were posters in primary colours with attractive fonts and beautiful illustrations and matching brochures. There were people who were keen to talk, and to listen. I was firmly in the clutches of the private sector.
I was quickly introduced to a smooth and confident Tim (his real name, I think) from Westfield’s people and I asked him just how likely it was that any of the feedback he got from the people of Croydon would really be incorporated into the design. Surely some things would be possible and others not? We can’t just have things because we want them, can we?
Well, he said, it depends what people ask for. For example, if you want an ice rink where WH Smith is, that’s not going to happen.
I asked him how Westfield were going to deal with the decline in the retail sector, which has been going on for the last 25 years. Westfield were essentially shopbuilders, weren’t they?
The future is orange: one cardboard cut-out display made an attempt to model a revised street plan for the town centre
Not any more, said Tim, smoothly and confidently. Unlike the previous plans Westfield had teased Croydon with, this version of the development was “not going to be retail-led”. There was going to be a mix.
He envisaged the site as three parts, the Centrale site to the west of North End, Whitgift North to the East from Poplar Walk down to about half way, and then Whitgift South down to George Street.
Whitgift North was going to be predominantly “high-density” residential, with some retail, leisure and community spaces, Whitgift South mostly retail and leisure and workspaces, while Centrale would remain as retail and leisure.
So, a lot of residential? Yes, said Tim, still smooth and confident. Depending on the outcome of this engagement, he envisages somewhere in the region of 1,500 to 3,000 residential units. Or what we might call “flats”.
“High-rise, then?” I asked. Yes, said Tim, with blocks higher closer to Wellesley Road, and not so high as we got towards Centrale.
It’s a big project, I said. How long is it going to take to complete?
Realistically, said Tim, between 10 and 15 years. I briefly contemplated my own mortality and tried to calculate my chances of being alive for the completion of the scheme. Instead of saying this out loud, I asked Tim: “So, it’s going to be a building site for 15 years?”
No, he replied, this is a staged plan. Westfield wouldn’t close the centre of Croydon down, said Tim, surprisingly still smooth but sounding perhaps a bit less confident.
First, he said, there will be the pop-ups in the Allders building (Westfield called them “kiosks” in its planning application) and there will be other “opportunities” for meanwhile use across the site during the developments.
The development itself will only start after the public engagement, which is due to last for a year. Westfield’s brochure itself says: “Both the Centrale and Whitgift shopping centres are open and will remain open in the coming years. A planning application means it will likely be years before construction starts.”
Whitgift South will be developed first. Once it is complete, work will start on Whitgift North.
Phased development: the Allders end of the Whitgift Centre will be first to undergo the long-awaited ‘regeneration’
What about Bishops, the little wine bar that is tucked away in the depths of Whitgift (South)? Tim smoothly said that all tenants were being consulted, but it is not easy to see how an independent player like Bishops fits into the Westfield vision of Croydon’s future.
A perusal of the slick and colourful brochure reveals something else, an apparent little niggle between Westfield and Croydon Council. On Page 2, under “What is the North End Quarter?” is the response, “This is the name given by the council to the area of the town centre…”.
You may or may not consider that it is worth the bother of providing your thoughts, your stories or your dreams to Westfield. You might want to tell them to wind their NEQ in a bit.
If you want to support Bishops wine bar, and all the other quirky little outlets that are clinging on in the Whitgift Centre, then tell them. If you want artists’ studios, green spaces, a café culture, sourdough pizza outlets, water features, public art, peace in Palestine, a tram to Coulsdon, whatever, tell them. After all, they say they are listening and want to provide “place-led change” and “an appropriate use of mixes”.
But if you want an ice rink, forget it. You won’t get one of those.
- The Great! and Super! Urban Room is open on Sat Nov 16 (10am–1pm); Tue Nov 19 (10am–1pm); and Thu Nov 21 (2pm–7.30pm). And that’s it. Take your own stickers along, though
Read more: Westfield wants to build five times as many flats in town centre
Read more: Westfield reveal consultation and more delays on ‘masterplan’
Read more: Westfield boss says Croydon scheme could take 15 more years
- 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
PRU Good News story: I am a volunteer at the long-running (since 2001) Wheels for Wellbeing (WfW) inclusive cycling sessions at Croydon Sports Arena. WfW have three sites in South London, the newest of which is at Ladywell (LB of Lewisham). There, WfW use half of a sports hall, with the other half used by a local pupil referral unit (PRU). The WfW staff/volunteers were told to always keep the partition in the centre of the hall closed to keep apart from the “evil” PRU kids. One day, the partition had jammed and couldn’t be closed, but WfW went ahead with their “dementia” session, where elderly people from care homes/day centres come to pedal around the hall, and it was a “lightbulb” moment. The PRU kids, who are used to always being told not to do this and that, and that they were “bad people”, found that they could cycle with elderly people around the hall on side-by-side trikes and swap stories about their lives, etc. We haven’t yet signed any of them up for a 40 year career in social care, but it was a good start !
That is far more positive than anything anyone can say about the much altered and delayed plans for re-developing the Central Croydon ghost town !
This why the Council went bankrupt.
Actually, it isn’t.
Just convert the whole of the Whitgift Centre plus Allders into housing/community facilities with no shops, pop-ups or whatever. Close the subway under the Wellesley Road and demolish that awful car park. Concentrate the shops on North End plus Centrale.
Waiting for Westfield? Waiting for Godot, more like it
So it will essentially take almost 30 years since this company first came into Croydon to finish building a series of skyscrapers filled with thousands of flats with a bit of shopping thrown in. It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry, some people are so desperate for just anything they’ll get behind this without questioning it but they are just conning themselves. Croydon deserves better and quicker!!
‘Croydon deserves better’? Please explain – what have we done that makes us deserve anything? We are the architects of our desperate situation, or at least the men and women we’ve elected over the last few years are. The only thing Croydon deserves is pity.
When you say ‘we’, I’m not going to hold myself responsible for the incompetence and stupidity of a handful of people over the years that I never voted for. So you may want to pity yourself, I want to fight for things to be better.
We didn’t elect Jo Negini or Heather Cheesbrough or Colm Lacey, whose fatal combination of arrogance and incompetence were (and in the case of one of them continues to be) a disaster for Croydon. Scott and Butler have long gone – no doubt enjoying the many thousands they took over the years.
We deserved better that the massive payout Negrini got. We deserve better than Lacey and others who have never faced any kind of repercussions for their failures. And people paying massive council tax bills for a bankrupt council deserve better than Cheesbrough’s typically incoherent mumbo-jumbo and glazed chocolate eclairs.
Here’s a funny thing. Who first approved Negrini being appointed to a job in Croydon? A: Jason Perry.
Who gave a glowing reference from her time at Lambeth? A: Steve Reed
For the last time, ‘we the people’ do not elect council officers – we elect the people who appoint them.
That’s how it’s supposed to work. But, for the last time, that’s not how the officials allow it to work.