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Camden’s shame
ONCE it was tatty, disconnected from its surrounds and recognised by many as a shopping centre in poor taste.
This week, following several years of reconstruction and an input of high-level design, the Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury was unveiled as a transformation devoutly to be wished. The secret formula lay with the landlords Allied London who saw its potential – two rows of stunning architecture, with flats cascading imaginatively down to the long channel of shops.
Built in the late 1960s it really came under the dead hand of local authority planners, and with no control over the choice of shops in the parade, it slipped downhill.
Allied London saw the potential market of customers – from its surrounding universities, hospitals, institutes and many private blocks. They also hoped – in this consumerist age – shoppers would drift in from Oxford Street and nearby Marylebone.
Apart from the smaller Kingswell shopping complex in Hampstead, the new Brunswick Centre flies the flag of a successful infusion of private capital. Does this mean that only the private market can create the kind of shopping complex that people today want to flock to?
It stands in startling contrast to what has been allowed to happen to Camden High Street – fancy shops, all much of a sameness at one end, and a string of shops, all lined up in a higgledy-piggidly row, at the other end near Mornington Crescent.
True, Camden Council does not have the direct control over the design and placing of retailers as does Allied London, but its promises of the middle 1990s, that it would mastermind a new look High Street looks very hollow today.
Pledges were made, overseeing organisations set up, all amid much attempted ballyhoo, yet so little has been done, leaving the High Street the shame of the borough, the shame, that is, considering, like the Brunswick Centre, its potential.
Walker’s legacy
IAN Walker is leaving the Town Hall like a hero – at least in Labour’s eyes.
His vision of a crime-free Camden, with young malcontents scooped up by Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, (Asbos) coincided with those of Labour. His departure to Newham Council is hardly a secret at a Town Hall. In a sense, it’s bad timing.
It comes in a week when the Youth Justice Board is in crisis faced by a bulging queue of youngsters waiting to be locked up. Part of the blame is being laid on the over-use of Asbos, something the Lord Chief Justice seemed aware of in his exclusive interview with the New Journal this week (See page 5). Labour’s legacy at the Town Hall was to boost the Asbo system. Maybe they’re sorry about it now.
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