Latest look at Woolwich town centre upgrade
With a few hours free this week I popped back to Woolwich to photograph the town centre upgrades taking place on Powis Street and Beresford Square.
On Powis Street, work has neared its western extremity as it heads towards the junction with Hare Street.
It won’t actually head much further nor cover Hare Street and the western end of Powis Street.
I should add the tarmac is temporary and work is being undertaken in stages.
Well, hopefully it’s temporary. Greenwich put in tarmac along Abbey Wood’s upgraded street beside shops just a few short years after work was completed.
In terms of work progress, firstly the “road” is going in then they’ll head back working on new surfaces either side.
This is an image of how it should shape up upon completion.
Aside from new seating there”ll be landscaping along Powis Street.
None of this is yet evident mind but should start to appear pretty shortly.
Beresford Square
There’s not a great deal of change visible at Beresford Square.
Market traders continue to trade on Green’s End and General Gordon Square, where they seem to be doing pretty well.
There’s certainly a lot of passing footfall.
At the site of a future pavilion/café, it appeared that some digging had been undertaken but not much to see.
A couple more things to be seen in Woolwich; firstly an old single storey building is now down.
Back in early 2021 I covered demolition plans for this site.
And finally the Cupp shop seemed to getting a bit of a refurb despite not opening too long ago.
Cupp have dozens of stores across the UK. It’s certainly one of the smartest shop fronts in the town centre.
The counter appears to have been moved so perhaps a change in model and layout.
Anyway that’s your lot for now. Loads going on as ever in Woolwich of course from the demolition of the Catholic Club recently covered to awaited new plans for the major MacBean Site leading off Powis Street.
I’ll be keeping an eye on them all.
Not sure how they can fit TfL’s 2 way cycle lane into the upgraded section between Hare Street and MacBean street.
So dangerous.
It’s far from ideal. The best course of action would be to have a cycle lane along Woolwich High Street past the Waterfront and completely rebuild that road given it’s now seeing much more housing.
It’s exactly the thing Community Infrastructure Levy income could help fund and many boroughs would do so, but this is Greenwich Council so after a decade of failure with capitalising from new development now seek to continue that with a badly bodged revision process.
Ironically major new developments beside the Woolwich cycle lanes look set to be student homes/co-living which they’ve had very low CIL rates for – and havn’t bothered to revise despite being seconds from the Elizabeth line. In fact with co-living they’ve gone for a lower rate. Amazing work.
The money is there for improvements but Greenwich are too poorly managed or too in hock to developers to capture it.
I walk past the market everyday and the new location looks a lot busier and more inviting than the old one. Would be curious what traders think.
“I’ll be keeping an eye on them all”.
For some reason I hear this in the voice of Alan Partridge on one of his podcasts, keeping an eye on the pedestrianisation of Norwich town centre.
Already got my big plate ready for the Premier Inn all you can eat breakfast
I predict the flower beds will become neglected and full of litter
You are not wrong M Dixon. Sadly as we have seen time and time again once improvements are finished and the contractors leave the site..The Council do not maintain them.
Public realm improvements and public realm maintenance ate not high on Greenwich Councils agenda.
Perhaps if people didn’t drop litter in the first place or, heaven forbid, actually picked it up?