Whitgift Clearance Now On!
The hazy scheme of the Westfield development in Croydon has undoubtedly been talked about for many years, but local people still lack the important information on something coming much sooner than people think.
The idea of the scheme sparked excitement for Croydon residents, but this faded away with the lack of new information until it seemed to be just a pipe dream. However, now it has been given the green light and it is finally on its way. This is a £1.5 billion investment split bewteen Westfield and Hammerson, which will see the clearance of the Whitgift Centre completed the start of 2017, and the scheme estimated for completion in the early months of 2020.
Another issue which might cross people’s minds now, especially the young people that take themselves to the Whitgift Centre so much, is that if the centre is to be closed, where will we all shop for three and a half years. However, the development has covered this with the help of another ghost town of a shopping centre full of vacant, bare and deserted shops and eerie aisles devoid of all enthusiastic browsers...Centrale! Some shops in the Whitgift Centre are already starting to be relocated into Centrale. The space is being created from the existing vacant shops and the open space that was the food bank upstairs. The new Box Park development at East Croydon Station will serve as an incidental attraction drawing customers to Croydon during the construction phase.
From speaking to the Directors behind the transformation, it seems that our new shopping centre will have a huge John Lewis, a cinema, an enormous car park with the capactity for 3000 to 3500 cars and a walkway that goes straight through the shopping centre that is open twenty four hours a day with surveillance meaning that you don’t have to walk the long way round to get to the other side of Croydon.
The Croydon Partnership were eager to let people know that they have also contributed a lot to Croydon as a whole, as shown in their Community Plan when they invested a total of £308,526 in Croydon in 2014 as well as involving 4,656 people in local community events and engaging 824 young people. It has also been made clear that the new jobs, created by this new development will be used to help employment rates in Croydon.
The last issue to resolve is transport and traffic. The busy George Street tram stop will remain open, just made a bit more spacious and less of a ‘sardine can’ situation. The Dingwall loop will mean that more trams can be used to go into Croydon. However, it seems that the problem of traffic on Wellesley Road is still being planned out with computer-based models to see where the bottle-necks seem to be in the traffic flow. It seems we will just have to wait patiently to see what improvements they make there. If any.
Sharna Piercy, Croydon High School
