Broxbourne Borough Council and Hertfordshire County Council have major plans to turn a corner of Herts into a thriving new town centre combining retail, leisure, homes and commercial premises.
Home county Hertfordshire is preparing for investment of around £400m to create a town centre - Brookfield Riverside, Cheshunt - includes a major retail and leisure hub as well as new civic headquarters, offices, residential and other amenities.
In July, Broxbourne Borough Council and Hertfordshire County Council selected Sovereign Centros as development partner for the mixed use project, located at the Turnford interchange on the A10, and three miles north of junction 25 of London orbital the M25.
The 50-acre Brookfield Riverside site includes plans for 230,000 sq ft of retail, 250,000 sq ft of leisure, restaurants and a cinema, 100,000 sq ft of offices including a new civic headquarters, 200 homes, 100 assisted living units, a 2,500 space car park and a significant public realm development.
Detailed plans are expected to be shared early next year, ahead of final planning and consultation with local residents, with the development projected to be delivered in 2024.
The site forms part of a larger development – ‘Brookfield’ – comprising 330 acres, which will see 1,250 homes constructed in the adjacent Brookfield Garden Village on top of the dwellings within Brookfield Riverside.
Developer Sovereign Centros was appointed following a competitive tendering exercise run by advisor Cushman & Wakefield and as part of the deal the council will provide the land, while Sovereign Centros will source the finance for the project.
Chris Geaves, chief executive of Sovereign Centros, said at the launch: “This is an amazing opportunity to develop in a very under-developed and untapped segment of the country on the edge of London to create a development which is really different to that anywhere else in the UK.”
RPA Perspective Leader of Broxbourne Borough Council, Councillor Lewis Cocking, said the aspiration is to create a major new town centre that allows locals to walk into their new hub or to travel short distances.
“The central aim of this is that it is mixed use, so relocating the civic headquarters to the site is part of drawing people in,” said Cocking. “Then there will be the retail and leisure, the offices and the residential surrounding it. It will all be entwined, not in zones, just like traditional town centres.”
And while some of the retail will be geared towards local, convenience requirements, Cocking insists that they will also be targeting the major national chains, who he believes still retain a demand for locations such as Broxbourne, leveraging the area’s reputation as a retail setting with a retail park opposite that includes a Marks & Spencer, Boots and Tesco (the latter has its corporate headquarters in Cheshunt).
The nearby Brookfield Garden Village is to be built to the north of Cheshunt Park and Cheshunt Golf course. Most of the land which will be developed is currently fields and forest by the side of the main road, with the area south of the river owned by the council and the sites north of the river owned by the Harvey family. This development will be on the land currently occupied by the New River Trading Estate, the Halfhide Lane travellers and allotments sites and additional land to the north of the New River.
“We believe that giving residents the option to have high quality shopping on their doorstep rather than by travelling on the M25 will be very appealing to both shoppers and retailers,” Cocking said. “But the important thing is that all the uses will be entwined, there won’t be an office area, a leisure area, a retail area. Everything will be mixed, because we feel that’s what people want.”
