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OCTOBER 16Th 2005
By GRAHAM NORWOOD
A new type of housing development, with 279 flats as part of a shopping mall, aims to transform one of Surrey’s least glamorous town centres. The flats are in a £130m development called The Heart in Walton-on-Thames, whose town centre has been dominated by brutal 1960s red-brick architecture.
Although some new supermarkets and out-of-town DIY stores have flats on top, these usually occupy a single storey. The Heart ozone of the first covered shopping centres in the UK to be topped by up to six storeys of apartments.
The development, a chrome-and-glass slab that will contrast starkly with its surroundings, will not be completed until 2008, but phase one of the flats went on sale last month. They have high prices by local standards – starting at £185,000 for the smallest one-bed units, with an average floor space of just 570sq ft, and from £275,000 for two bedrooms at an average of 840 sq ft. Estimated annual service charges start at about £1,200.
Ten of the first 28 units for sale were reserved within two weeks – a reasonable volume in the current market, according to local estate agents. But The Heart, developed by O&H Properties, faces a serious challenge: whether Walton can really attract top-dollar buyers.
“Just outside the town there are the most expensive homes in Surrey, yet until now the centre has been a dump, with boarded-up properties and charity shops,” says Adam Hesse, of local estate agent Aston Mead. “But recently there’s been interest from buyers outside, citing this regeneration as the reason.
“The new development is likely to attract young professionals who would not have considered the town. Until now, they’ve gone to Weybridge, Cobham or Esher. Walton prices have fallen about 5% this year, but this redevelopment might reverse that.”
O&H is cautious about what kind of buyers The Heart will attract. “We’re considering offering a 24-hour concierge service of the kind you see in central London and other large cities. But we want to test demand to see if buyers really want that level of service,” says Eli Shahmoon, a director of O&H.
He says the quality will in part be determined by the quality of the shops he attracts to the 45 units on the centre’s ground and first floors: “This will be a gap and Jigsaw-type mall, not a fast-food takeaway one.”
The flats will share CCTV and security services with the shops and restaurants but will have separate entrances, their own car park and an acre of gardens on the second level.
The Heart is the first of several developments of this type taking shape across the country. “Ones are being built in Harrogate and Bradford, and we’ll be seeing many more,” predicts Fiona Sadeck, author of a report for John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, on homes above shops and head of research at property consultancy Colliers CRE.
“They have two objectives – to provide more housing where there’s a shortage, and to prevent town centres from being dead after 5.30pm,” she says. “Local planners want to avoid a shopping centre ripping the heart out of a place and becoming a ghost town after dark.”
In Surrey, famous for its stockbroker-belt houses, hundreds of town-centre flats are being built to meet government housing targets on Brownfield development. The county council says 38,800-46,000 new homes must be built by 2025.
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