Shopping centre closes its doors for last time

A town-centre shopping complex is closing its doors for the final time ahead of a regeneration scheme.

Demolition work on the Nicholsons Shopping Centre in Maidenhead, Berkshire - known as The Nicholsons - is due to start by early August and will continue into next spring.

The building, which dates back to the early 1960s, will be replaced by hundreds of flats and more than 50 new shops and other retail outlets.

The project's developers say the centre's closure marks the end of one era and the beginning of another.

In the early 1970s a roof was placed over the then open-air shopping complex, transforming it into the building people know today.

In its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s, locals would flock to familiar stores, including Woolworths and and record shop Our Price.

By the end of the 1990s, the Nicholsons was eclipsed by the larger Oracle shopping centre in Reading.

The current £500m Maidenhead town centre regeneration scheme will see it replaced by 850 apartments and more than 55 retail units.

As part of the scheme, a public square named after Sir Nicholas Winton - who lived in the town and is often dubbed the "British Schindler" for saving Jewish children during World War Two - will become Maidenhead's "new centre stage", developers said.

Will Robinson, from Areli Developments, which is overseeing the regeneration of Maidenhead town centre, said the latest phase would be "the final piece of the jigsaw".

"This is about creating a proper place where people live and work. There'll be shops, cafes and restaurants and lots of public spaces."

Robinson said that changing shopping habits meant it was never going to be possible to replace the Nicholsons with another purely retail offer.

"It's all about putting people in the town centre and putting people working in the town centre.

"They are what drives the cafes, shops, the restaurants," he added.

The hope is that Maidenhead's new Nicholsons Quarter and the wider town centre regeneration scheme will be completed by the end of the decade.

It is not the only Berkshire retail complex which will change beyond all recognition in the next few years.

In Reading more than a 1,000 flats will be built across the town's Broad Street Mall and Oracle shopping sites.

In Newbury, planning permission's been granted for more than 300 new homes on the site of the recently closed Kennet Centre.