Taking risks is helping to transform Croydon’s image according to the council’s chief executive Jo Negrini.
Speaking on a panel discussion entitled Croydon Urban Edge at MIPIM 2017, the borough’s most senior council officer pointed to the arrival of Boxpark as evidence of a proactive approach towards changing people’s perceptions of the town.
“We had to do some interventions so where people would go ‘I didn’t expect to see that in Croydon’, she said.
“We proactively went and got Boxpark as the thousands of people who use or pass through East Croydon station every day to see that things were happening in Croydon.
“Stanhope were fantastic to give us that site and actually that one intervention – when I was talking to Body Shop one of the biggest reasons they gave for coming to Croydon was Boxpark.”
Indeed, Croydon was recently named as the number one choice for office locations in the UK – with central London third – underlining Jo’s belief that Croydon’s image is changing fast.
“It is those kind of interventions it’s the Andy Warhol Month, it’s the punk festival, that join the people’s heads and makes them realise things are actually shifting but you’ve got to carry it on to everything else
“But it’s being provocative and taking a risk with things that has been a gamechanger for us and now we are looking for other people to work with – but they’ve got to be in it to help make it a great place to be.
We’ve got to take risks and the council took a big risk with Boxpark because it could have gone disastrously wrong but you’ve got to be risk-takers or else nothing is going to change.”