The size of the task facing Croydon in becoming a top 10 shopping centre in the UK, a stated aim behind the construction of a new £1billion shopping centre, is highlighted in a new report.
Venuescore 2015-16, a document produced by the Javelin Group to compare shopping venues across the UK, ranks Croydon is 20th in the UK in terms of the scale of its retail offer.
Its mark of 349 makes it second of the outer London city centres, behind only Kingston in 17th with 392.
Retail giants Westfield and Hammerson are to team up under the banner of the Croydon Partnership to deliver Croydon’s new retail and leisure offering on the site of the existing Whitgift Shopping Centre.
"Croydon was historically a leading retail destination in London," said Hammerson chief investment officer Peter Cole. "This is about putting Croydon back to where it used to be.
"This is about taking people back onto the high street, into shops, into restaurants, into cinemas and making it a real dynamic city centre.
"We’re going to put Croydon back on the map; we will be bringing new shoppers to Croydon who haven’t been coming here for the last generation."
Following the granting of a compulsory purchase order, the developers and Croydon Council are in the process of completing the land assembly process. Whitgift’s final Christmas before closing will be this year with the bulldozers scheduled to move in early in 2017.
The projected opening of the new shopping centre is 2020 with discussions ongoing with potential anchor stores for the scheme.
The full top 20 does not include London, where the West End scores 1,614 and the City 808.
Top 20: 1 Glasgow 807, 2 Manchester 766, 3 Birmingham 686, 4 Leeds 642, 5 Liverpool 551, 6 Nottingham 520, 7 Brighton 517, 8 Edinburgh 514, 9 Cardiff 512, 10 Aberdeen 464, 11 Newcastle 458, 12 Bristol 419, 13 Norwich 410, 14 Reading 408, 15 Belfast 407, 16 Leicester 401, 17 Kingston 392, 18 Bath 369, 19 Southampton 355, 20 Croydon 349.
Although the report highlights Glasgow Fort as the UK’s leading retail park destination, it points out that Croydon’s Purley Way would come out on top if the cluster of individual retail parks were combined.