Who is behind the development
The development is a project of The Westgate Partnership, the bastard offspring of shopping centre oligopolists, Capital Shopping Centres and multinational landlords LaSalle Investment Management – a major force in the world’s real estate capital markets with $47.9 billion of assets.
One of the major “retail units” will be controlled by giant department store chain John Lewis, who will be ploughing in £40 million into their shop. John Lewis claim that they want to reduce the miles they drive year on year – presumably they don’t give a toss about how far their customers drive or how long they spend in city centre traffic jams? They also allege that “[they] remain committed to supporting the communities we trade in”. We at Westgate Watch think that they’ve got an odd way of showing it – knocking down elderly people’s homes and chainsawing trees!
London firm Allies And Morrison will be the “Masterplanners”. That’s a sort of futuristic term for architects as far as we can work out. In the past they’ve helped Tescos with a charm offensive.
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Its also worth noting that as a result of the deal, the Council has given away control of the Westgate car park. This means (a) that the City Council only gets a fixed revenue from the car park and cannot increase parking charges to offset cuts elsewhere anymore and (b) The Westgate Partnership has complete discretion to cut the car parking charges as much as it wants, whatever the effect on congestion/air pollution in the city centre.
Matt
[...] 28 Feb, Town Hall, Oxford)., Oxford residents are criticising the John Lewis Partnership for their deep involvement in the Westgate expansion. They are asking John Lewis to use its considerable influence to put the [...]