Westfield and Hammerson have secured John Lewis and Waitrose as anchor tenants for the £1.4bn redevelopment of Croydon town centre, after more than a decade of talks on the retailers’ debut flagship department store in the town.
The two retailers, operated by The John Lewis Partnership, will be combined under one roof, covering 165,000 sq ft, with Waitrose on the ground floor.
The agreed terms have not yet been revealed. However, John Lewis has previously set its own specifications before agreeing to open a store.
The store will be part of more than 300 shops, cafés, leisure facilities and a multi-screen cinema complex alongside 1,000 new homes on the former Whitgift shopping centre.
The deal is a significant achievement for the Croydon Partnership, the joint venture between Westfield and Hammerson, whose desire to bag John Lewis as a core tenant has been of the worst-kept secrets in the retail industry.
Top of the wishlist
The department store has been at the top of the wishlist of anchor stores for Croydon’s regeneration since as early as 2005, when department store Allders gave up its right to a space at a nearby development known as Park Place, before the development was shelved in 2009.
It wanted to launch in Croydon only if it could be a central anchor, between the 900,000 sq ft scheme and the adjoining Whitgift Centre.
At the time, plans showed the department store at the back of the scheme, shut off from the town’s other shopping areas.
Keen to bag John Lewis’s tenancy, Minerva revised its eight-year-old plans for the 1m sq ft Park Place in 2008 to entice the department store retailer.
However, the development was cancelled after Minerva’s agreement with Lendlease, its development manager for the project, collapsed in 2009.
Teaming up
The pursuit for John Lewis gathered pace again after Westfield and Hammerson teamed up at the start of 2013 to fund a £1.4bn redevelopment of the Whitgift Centre and its adjacent Centrale centre.
After nearly six years of negotiations and revised plans, the partnership made a breakthrough when it gained consent for its plans from the council in November 2017.
Signing John Lewis heralds yet another watershed moment for the project, which involves 1.5m sq ft of retail, leisure and restaurants, as well as car parking and new residential units.
Its other major flagship tenant so far is Marks & Spencer.
It will go a long way toward easing long-held concerns about the project. But there is still a long wait before the regeneration takes hold and the Westfield scheme comes to fruition.
The shopping centre, set to start construction in 2019, is not expected to open until 2023.
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