Plans to add new housing in redevelopment plans to open up The Spires shopping centre

BYM Capital, owners of The Spires shopping centre, are drawing up plans for a major redevelopment to rebuild much of the existing precinct to provide blocks of flats above shops and cafes and also to construct new homes on adjoining land.

The company says it wants to replace the shopping mall – which is currently closed at night – with a new pedestrian street through the development, from Barnet High Street to Stapylton Road.

There would be shops and cafes on either side with housing above, including affordable homes.

BYM has already held discussions with Barnet Council’s planning department.

Over the New Year it will hold consultations with community associations, retail tenants, Barnet market traders and other interested groups, as well as nearby residents.

Waitrose, which has recently agreed a new 15-year lease on its supermarket, would remain The Spires’ anchor store; Britannia Parking would continue to operate the multi-storey car park; and the paved frontage on to Stapylton Road would be kept and improved as the site of the twice-weekly Barnet Market.

Robin Bishop, who leads the Barnet Society’s planning team — and who is among those who have been briefed on the plans — has welcomed BYM’s invitation to allow local groups to engage in discussions with its architects and consultants.

He said the proposed redevelopment looked like becoming the biggest project in the town centre since the opening of The Spires in 1989 and therefore it was all the more important the town had a chance to take part in the process.

Once BYM has developed its proposals, Redwood Consulting will organise public consultations early in 2023.

When AIMCO, a Canadian pension fund, sold The Spires to BYM in May 2021 for £28 million – well below the previous valuation of £40 million – the five-acre site centre was advertised as having the potential for a mix of retail and residential development.

BYM increased the size of the site – see illustration above – in September 2022 after purchasing for around £3 million the unused former car park at the junction of Chipping Close and St Albans Road.

This was to have been the site of a Premier Inn. Under BYM’s plans it would now become available for residential development.

An aerial view showing how The Spires might be redeveloped was published in 2021 by real estate advisers Savills proposing several five-storey blocks of flats with shops and cafes on the ground floor.

In a statement announcing their proposals to redevelop The Spires, BYM say the proposed heights of their new buildings are “still very much at an early stage”.

“In broad terms we anticipate the scheme’s taller elements being within the centre of the site with the edges respecting the existing, suburban build environment and sensitive to the quality of the existing residents’ outlook.

“On the northern side – by Chipping Close – we will be guided by the height of the hotel that was recently approved for the car park.”

Planning approval – which has now expired – was granted by Barnet Council in November 2018 for a 100-room Premier Inn which would have been four storeys high.

The abandoned car park site of 0.4 acres – together with unused land in the service yard at the rear of Waitrose – would both be earmarked for residential development.

In outlining their proposals, BYM say they believe the existing shopping mall in The Spires needs to adapt to changing shopping habits and this could be encouraged with a new, enlarged pedestrian route which would connect the High Street to Stapylton Road and would be open 24/7 as a public thoroughfare.

This pedestrian route would be landscaped and bordered with shops and cafes; there would be new flexible retail units, fit for “new shopping requirements”, together with new finishes, signage, and lighting.

Fruit and vegetable stall holder Andy Gardiner – who is joint proprietor of
Barnet Market Ltd – welcomed an invitation from BYM to discuss the redevelopment of The Spires in early January.

All the indications the market traders were getting were that BYM considered the market a valuable addition to the shopping centre. Mr Gardiner was hoping the company might have further ideas on how the market could be improved.

He said he recognised that it was time the unused land around the shopping centre, including the abandoned car park in Chipping Close, was redeveloped.

BYM have emphasised that if planning approval is granted, the redevelopment will be phased to ensure that retailers can continue to operate throughout the construction phase.

No indication has been given of a possible timescale for the redevelopment but clearly the various construction projects would take several years to complete.