£1.4bn Croydon Westfield plans get green light

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 15, 2017

Croydon Council has approved a major new shopping development that means Westfield will build its third London area mall there, with an opening date of 2022.

The £1.4 billion mall will transform shopping in the area that’s already a major regional shopping destination. 

It’s part of the local authority’s plan to regenerate the town centre and transform what was the Whitgift Shopping Centre. Demolition work will start there next year with construction to begin in 2019.

The new Westfield will house hundreds of stores, restaurants, cafés and leisure facilities plus a cinema and bowling alley. While it will be smaller than the existing Westfields in White City and Stratford, it’s expected to drive a surge in Croydon shopping footfall. Last year the White City mall had over 27 million visitors and sales of almost £1 billion. Meanwhile Stratford City saw 47 million visitors and sales of £1.15 billion. And while giant malls often bring with them fears for town centres, importantly, Stratford itself has also seen a 10% to 15% visitor uplift in its town centre since the mall opened.

News of the new development comes at a time when shopping centres are seeing lower footfall overall but ‘supermalls’ (the largest, most prestigious locations) are increasingly attracting the most successful brands. This new Westfield is likely to be a key supermall for Southeast England and should attract a strong line-up of big name brands and flagship stores.

It will also create a large number of jobs in the area (the current estimate is around 7,000) and will be a major rival to Bluewater in nearby Kent. Bluewater is currently Europe’s largest mall and has seen/will see some major openings this year including Missguided, Coach and Kate Spade while Primark will debut there just as work starts on the Croydon development.