Blogging the Westfield
Over the Summer and early Autumn (i.e. Ramadan), I had a lot of work delivering electrical supplies to shopfitters working in the new Westfield centre, and spent many an hour sitting on the ramps leading off the West Cross Route in Shepherds Bush waiting to be allowed in to deliver truckloads of goods, or on the ramps waiting for forklifts to arrive or to get out of the way, or negotiating with the guys on the loading bay when my boss had mixed up goods going to different shop units because they were going to the same client, so when the centre opened yesterday, I decided I wanted to know what all the fuss had been about. The centre took five years to build, and at the time I was delivering, it seemed unbelievable that it was only a couple of months from completion. So, I went along yesterday with my Canon digital SLR. You can see all of my pictures here.
I came in on the Central Line, and this was the first time I had been through Shepherds Bush since it closed. It was shut for most of 2008, in fact, and the first thing I noticed was that all the lovely green and red tilework from the old station had gone. The corridors were just as long and windy as before, and when I got to the top, it turned out to be a bog standard metal and glass tube station. They had not even provided disabled access. Really, it didn’t look like it was worth closing the whole station for that long for this. Across the “transport interchange”, you can see the new Overground station, which has about three trains an hour, mostly just going from Clapham Junction to Willesden Junction. Again, it seems like a lot of money was spent for very little gain (they have not opened up platform 1 at Clapham, which might well allow them to lay on more trains; right now, they have to make do with one platform at that station).
The walk up from Shepherds Bush station is long, something you only see once you walk up the hill and round a bend off the entrance road. That takes you along “Eat Street” (except that most of the food outlets are so far empty), past the entrance to Waitrose, House of Fraser and the car park, up the flight of stairs to the first actual shopping centre entrance. Really, I don’t think this will be winning any awards for design; the centre’s outside is grey brushed metal, with the big red “Westfield” logo scattered around; that actually doesn’t look like the logo of a shopping centre, more of a building contractor (and it’s Westfield London, as there are several other Westfields). Once inside, it was crowded and noisy, but that’s only to be expected on the first day. I took a few pictures of the ceiling tile work, which was impressive (particularly when they shine the lights onto them), but apart from that, it was pretty much a normal town centre shopping mall. It does not compare well even to Bluewater, in my opinion; Bluewater is spacious, although the walks are much longer there as it is all in one big circle.
The big disappointment about Westfield London, for me, is the fact that there is only one dedicated bookshop, namely a Foyles branch outside Debenham’s. Down the book aisles on the top level was the only bit of Westfield I found that was deserted and quiet! I had expected to find a Waterstone’s or Borders (particularly given that Books Etc., the bookshop chain that Borders took over, closed a branch in Shepherds Bush a few months ago), but no. The shops were mainly clothes shops and other common town centre chains. The second is that food outlets seemed thin on the ground, particularly compared to Bluewater where there are cafés all over the place.
Anyway, it was nice for one visit, but I don’t think I will be going out of my way to go there again – there is not much there that you cannot find in any other town centre. For my part, I do not think it is any threat to local shops in Shepherds Bush; they are just that – local shops – and many of them are ethnic shops and restaurants selling things you can’t buy in Westfield. One could say it turns Sheperds Bush into a town, rather than a village with a traffic jam (and I don’t doubt that Westfield will give it a few more traffic jams). As for whether it is much of a threat to the West End, anywhere I can’t browse in a good bookshop is no threat to my patch of the West End – in fact, it’s not even a threat to Kingston. I wonder how viable it will all be in the long run, since there’s a recession coming on and luxury clothes will not be among many people’s biggest priorities, one suspects. You can read a bit about the history of the site, and the man who now owns the place, here.
