Shopping centre businesses fear loss of ‘community’ if developers bulldoze it for flats

By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter

Business owners in a crumbling shopping centre earmarked for hundreds of homes fear the area will lose its sense of community if redevelopment plans go ahead.

Developers have been wanting to bulldoze the Leegate Centre, off Eltham Road in Lee Green, for more than a decade, but plans have never been realised.

Last year developer Galliard Homes revealed new proposals to build 563 homes and a 15-storey tower on the site, renewing hopes for the area’s future. Lewisham council will make a decision on the plans at a later date.

But for those businesses still occupying the run-down centre, the latest turn of events has been greeted with unease.

They fear they don’t have a place in the developer’s vision for the centre’s future, and face saying goodbye to the area for good.

Juliette Burke, manager of a Sue Ryder charity shop which has operated out of the centre for 25 years, said she imagined the store would have to leave.

She said: “The new units will be too small and too expensive. It will be the same as every new development: Starbucks, a gym, a supermarket. It’s a shame because it’s a good community here.

“We would like to stay here if it was affordable because the location is great. We are on the cusp of affluent areas where they donate and people from other areas come and buy. It’s a good community and there’s a good customer base.”

Louisa Gillespie, owner of Rhubarb & Custard café, said the rents on offer in the planned new retail spaces were too high and the leases too long for most of the small businesses in the shopping centre.

Ms Gillespie, who moved her café into the centre five years ago, said: “I think the rents they are offering after five years are very high, both for new and existing [businesses]. It’s not going to be affordable.

“What they’re offering here, they are asking for businesses to sign up to a 10-year lease. I think that’s the sticking point for the commercial offering. Even if we don’t stay, we would like there to be more of a commercial offering.”

She added: “It’s all being done at the same time so there’s no phasing at all and so it’s not going to be possibility to stay while it’s being redeveloped. There’s a community here. People do work together and that’s a good thing. It would be great if they did look at it in phases because then I think the community wouldn’t be so diluted.”

Under Galliard Homes’s plans for the site, a community centre, supermarket, restaurant and medical centre would also be built where the shopping centre currently stands, as well as a gym and a replacement pub for the now closed JD Wetherspoon branch.

A Galliard Homes spokesman said: “Since early 2021, Galliard Homes has been discussing the future of the Leegate Centre with local residents and community groups.

“Over the last two years we have also engaged with the site’s existing traders on a range of issues, including viable options for them to return to a regenerated Leegate Centre – should our current planning application be approved by the council later this summer. If our plans are given the ‘green light’ by Lewisham council, we look forward to continuing these discussions.”

Pictured top: Juliette Burke said the new units would be too expensive for the charity shop (Picture: Robert Firth)