Lewisham High Street changes: A look at progress on £24m project
A project to revamp Lewisham town centre isn’t setting the world alight – so far at least.
Work begun last summer on the £24 million project which includes £19 million from the previous government’s “levelling-up” project topped up by Lewisham Council.
In recent months work has been underway in parts of the town which required many bus routes to be diverted. One such place is Lewis Grove where attractive paving has been replaced. Road closures here for paving work has seen bus stops shifted off round the back of the shopping centre.
While high quality materials were replaced here for no apparent pressing reason, cuts elsewhere were made to the project due to cost pressures.
Compared to projects such as Woolwich’s town centre upgrades they havn’t at least gone for a bright white paving scheme which shows the dirt pretty much immediately and unsuitable for high footfall areas.
As of yet the market area hasn’t seen anything of note so far. In time a market pavilion will be constructed and the clocktower will see a clean.
Hopefully this will be better maintained than the current area.
The street is covered in patches of tarmac here and there as work undertaken and quick fixes implemented .
Towards the other end of town in the Catford direction more new paving is in closer to the library.
Again it seems quite odd given this area already had high quality, expensive and attractive paving. It wasn’t your run of the mill cheap material.
Is this really the priority when millions are on the table for public realm improvements? The paving replaced so far was in good condition unlike that around the clocktower and market.
Of course, funding for this levelling-up project was ringfenced to town centre work but some of what we’ve seen so far smacks of spending for spending’s sake.
Areas are also being prepared for landscaping in various parts of town.
The library has been closed for 18 months and counting so far. No sign of any internal or external changes so far.
The rooftop bar/social space was scrapped due to cost. That was the highest requested feature in consultation.
In addition to scrapping the bar Lewisham Council also agreed to dispose of the Library Resource Centre at 315 Hither Green Lane.
Lewisham shopping centre demolition
While at this end of town I took a walk to see if much action seen around the old Model Market. For those unaware this is the first section of Lewisham shopping centre set for demolition.
A former Argos store was also located in the area. As seen in the above image little sign of any movement so far.
Back to the town centre project and as ever with these projects the lingering issue is will it be maintained? The more complex and time consuming any project is to keep looking half decent the less likely it will be.
That counts when finances aren’t in terrible shape – and yet local authority funding for the day to day things right now is in terrible shape.
The best town centre upgrade projects are those that keep it simple from capital investment funds so when it comes to regular upkeep via current spending things aren’t too complex or expensive, while offering an attractive environment.
We’ll have to wait and see how Lewisham shapes up as despite months of upheaval so far (and 18 months when it comes to the library) not a great deal has yet changed.
Work should soon extend to the market area as well as a section beside the former co op and towards Lewisham police station.
I continue to experience the inconvenience caused by re-routing the buses and haven’t seen any noticeable changes to the pavements. However, there is still quite a lot of work to be done and I hope it will include paving the footpath that runs the length of the outdoor stalls. They are in a poor condition and constitute a trip hazard.
More trees needed in my opinion as tree canopy would provide much needed shade in summertime.
Lewisham and Catford are both in dire need of serious refurbishment. However the Labour run council has prov2d time and again it’s incompetence at anything effective for those of us living here. To that extent, after paying council tak in Catford for 20 years with no noticeable improvement, we have upped sticks and left. We were excited to come to Catford in 2004. 20 years later we were excited to leave. Best of luck to all those remaining.
Lewisham sure needs a make over hope for the better, catford is very in need too.be nice to see a decent difference be nice to have more shops etc.