Bargain prices: TG Jones, as WH Smith, was one of the original stores when the Whitgift Centre opened 60 years ago
Our retailing correspondent, MT WALLETTE, on the latest signs of the times in the Whitgift Centre
“Everything must go!” scream the bright yellow signs stuck to the windows of the recently re-styled TG Jones on North End.
Thing is, as far as the Whitgift Centre is concerned, almost everything has already gone.
Westfield’s development blight on Croydon town centre has claimed another victim, as the hollowing out of the Whitgift Centre continues.
With TG Jones, the announcement of its closure is as much due to the pernicious influence of private equity on our high-street brands as it is the deadly touch of the Paris-based developers.
WH Smith, which was the brand that the newsagents, bookshop and stationery store traded under until last summer, had been one of the first tenants of the Whitgift Centre when the mall opened almost 60 years ago. Croydon’s modern shopping centre was deemed so important to what was, for decades, a mainstay of almost every high street and railway station across the country, that WH Smith initially had two stores in the new Whitgift Centre.
But now they, or TG Jones, have joined Sainsbury’s, British Home Stores, Woolworths and dozens of other businesses to desert what was once the pride of Croydon.
This latest closure comes as Westfield, or Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, begin their latest public consultation on the future of Croydon town centre – the seventh consultation since they arrived in Croydon 15 years ago.
This consultation is markedly different: there’s no glitzy proposals for a large shopping mall, a south London version of Westfield centres at Stratford and Shepherds Bush. Instead, URW, which recently bought the freehold of most of the town centre, propose as many as 4,000 flats and a data centre. When they might actually start building anything, though, they refuse to say.
Like so many of Westfield’s Croydon tenants, TG Jones will be long gone by then.
Modella Capital is a London-based private equity firm that acquired 480 high street branches from WH Smith for £76million. By the start of this year, though, they were conducting a “restructuring” – corporate doublespeak for closures and job losses.
Modella blamed “challenging retail conditions”. Like the “challenging retail conditions” that had existed for the 20 years before they bought WH Smith.
Under their restructuring proposals, Modella wanted rent reductions on hundreds of their stores, and to stiff 120 landlords for rent for up to three years. At a High Court hearing held in May, TG Jones pleaded poverty, saying it was “on the brink of insolvency”. Their barrister told the court that the business was “highly distressed” and “running on fumes”.
Thousands of jobs are at risk over the closures.
‘Highly distressed’: combine Westfield’s development blight with tough trading conditions, and Croydon’s high street has been worse affected than other towns
Croydon’s TG Jones’s fate was known as early as January this year, when the closure of the Crown Post Office on the High Street was abruptly cancelled.
The Post Office had planned to move in to TG Jones, but aborted the move – ostensibly because of changes to Westfield’s development plans.
It now seems more likely that the TG Jones in the Whitgift Centre has been earmarked for closure.
The nub of the issue is that the Croydon shop was not making enough money or URW would not agree to Modella’s proposed rent reduction or amnesty. Or, probably, a bit of both.
“Private equity investors have cooled on consumer businesses as they search for faster-growing or more stable assets,” a report in the Financial Times today says.
Leaving private equity-owned businesses such as Morrisons, Pizza Express and TG Jones high and dry.
Read more: Westfield now want a data centre plus 4,000 flats in town centre
Read more: ‘The saddest news about Croydon town centre since the riots’
Read more: Perry’s poor waffle performance shows who is really in charge
Read more: The MP hidden away on third floor of a deserted shopping mall
- Westfield’s 15-year takeover of Croydon town centre – check out our essential timeline by clicking here
- For Inside Croydon’s unmatched archive of the Westfield saga, click here
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