American-style retail boost for a public more used to half-day closing

T IS easy to forget how innovative Brent Cross was. The naysayers thought it would be a commercial disaster but they didn’t anticipate the public’s thirst for a new way of shopping. Back in 1976, many high-street shops still closed for half days during the week and people worked more traditional office hours. But women were streaming back into the workplace and the need for an upmarket, easy-to-reach shopping centre, based on the successful American shopping-mall model, became evident.

The centre was the result of years of careful planning by the Hammerson Group. The idea for the 800,000 sq ft complex was conceived in 1957 and the proposed location chosen in 1963. The site on which the centre now stands was partly waste ground and partly allotments and included a stretch of the Hackney and Hendon dog track. Construction began in 1972.

New routes took buses straight on to a concourse outside the shops and the nearby Brent Underground station was renamed Brent Cross — though it is a quite a schlep from the station to the complex and not a particularly pleasant one for the pedestrian either.

But the centre was not aimed at customers coming via the underground; it was aimed primarily at those with cars — and with free parking for 3,000 of them, Brent Cross was poised for success. It currently attracts around 14 million shoppers a year. The centre was extended and refurbished in 1995 and now has parking spaces for 7,300 vehicles. (One of those car parks can be seen in the Bond film

in the scene where James Bond remotely steers his car out of a car park using one of Q’s devices.)

The new Brent Cross will house a cinema complex (with a proposed 16 hitech screens), a new M&S, twice the size of the current store, as well as remodelled John Lewis and Fenwick stores.

It will be ready towards the end of 2021, with three new multi-storey car parks and longer opening hours. Unfortunately, free parking will no longer be available because of planning laws but charges will be “affordable and good value”. A small price to pay, one expects, for what promises to be the ultimate 21st-century shopping experience.