Town Centre - the endless saga

A full critique of the scheme

Second Entrance for Walthamstow Central

Having looked back over some of my old papers about the redevelopment of Walthamstow the dreams are always years ahead of reality.

The Town Centre redevelopment, as featured in this week's WFN, is headlined "Underground station gets £15 million upgrade". Looking more closely "the funding has been granted on condition that the redevelopment of Walthamstow Mall goes ahead".

Although full planning permission to increase the retail by a third from 24,155 sqm to 32,155 sqm, only outline permission has been given to the 4 tower blocks. These will have to go through the normal planning process and it is unlikely full planning permission will be granted before the end of 2019.

So will Capital & Regional and Mount Anvil start the work before they have permission to build the real prize which is 460 flats at current prices of approximately £500k each, meaning they should collect 460 x  £500k =  £230m (2 bed in Walthamstow Gateway is £600k and Essex Brewery 3 bed flat is £800k.) ?

More importantly I noticed in today's paper Greggs financial position may not be that great as there are concerns that as we shop more on the internet we will be doing less shopping in real shops so therefore will not be out and about popping in to coffee shops. If this is the future what is the point of C&R creating at least 20 more (small supermarket sized shops 390sqm)? These will not come on stream for many years so who will be their tenants then?

Another major factor will be customer loyalty. With the noise and disruption caused by the Mall being a massive building site for many years how many shoppers will opt to go elsewhere - easily achieved by existing good transport links!!

More close analysis of the scheme coming here over the next few weeks!