Named and Shamed

Named and Shamed

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Squalid roads, buildings and locations in Croydon named and shamed.

Monday, February 28, 2005

Demolition

Those of you who loath a particular building, or area in Croydon, may find Channel 4's demolition website to be of interest.

They are looking for nominations for buildings that people want demolished.

I have nominated Dingwall road in its entirety.

Why not check it out, and nominate one yourself?

They claim that the winners will actually be demolished.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

How Independent is Croydon Council?

The Times, in its Thursday edition, printed a story about Minerva (the property company that owned Allders); seeming Minerva is funding Croydon Council's fight against the Whitgift shopping centre expansion plans proposed by Minerva's rivals, who own the Whitgift.

Minerva is paying the six figure costs of legal fees incurred by the council, at a planning inquiry into the expansion of the Whitgift shopping centre.

The owners of Whitgift are appealing against the council's decision not to approve plans to extend the shopping centre. The extension is called Bishops Court 2.

The council is reported to back the rival project called Park Place, which is proposed by Minerva.

The Times summarises the schemes as follows:

Bishops Court 2: (proposed by the owners of the Whitgift shopping centre) Plans to redevelop the site, where an Allders department store is located, with a 495,563 sq ft shopping centre.

Park Place: (proposed by Minerva) Plans to build a new shopping centre with 1.08 million sq ft of shops, restaurants and cafés on an Allders department store site and adjoining sites.

To my view, this must surely raise reservations about the council's independence.

As ever, the citizens of Croydon are left wondering when the creeping blight emanating from the town centre will be eradicated.

In my view, we are not being well served.

Allders Undervalued?

The Times repprts that Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, is under increasing pressure to look at events surrounding the collapse of Allders and the potential loss of the employees’ pensions.

Staff at the chain’s Hull shop have collected a petition asking Mr Johnson, who is the MP for Hull West, to investigate last April’s sale of Allders’ store in Croydon to Minerva, the property company that owns 60 per cent of the chain’s parent company, for £49 million.

The workers believe was far below the store’s true value. Minerva has said that it will not cover any of the pension fund’s liabilities.

This is going to get ugly.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Allders May Be Left Vacant

The Times writes today that Minerva may be forced to resubmit plans for its £500 million Park Place shopping centre development in Croydon, after Allders gave up its right to be the leading tenant.

They also note that the Croydon store, which adjoins the Park Place development site, will be left vacant over the summer.

An empty store, the size of Allders, in the heart of Croydon is certainly not what Croydon needs right now.

Monday, February 07, 2005

My Compliments

My compliments to Croydon Council; they have repaired the broken bollard and replaced the damaged street light on Dingwall Road, that I wrote about last week.

Now if they could see their way clear to fixing all the other problems, highlighted on this site over the past year, then I would be very happy indeed.

Fate of Allders Undecided

It seems that the administrators, handling the Allders disposal, have been unable to decide what is best for Allders' head office in Croydon; they are still reviewing "all options".

See full report on Accountancy Age.