Victoria Square Woking
Victoria Place Woking is £750m project which is a joint venture between Woking Borough Council, and MoyAllen. The project delivered several key parts of the regeneration of the town centre:
- Bring together the two shopping centre siblings (the Peacock Centre & Wolsey Place), each owned by the JV partners.
- Deliver nearly 500 new homes in the town centre, walking distance to the nearby mainline train station.
- Provide a new 4star+ hotel for Hilton
- Provide a new M&S anchor tenant amongst a dozen new retail units at the podium of the hotel & flats.
- Provide a new home for the Italia Conte dance school
- Provide a new home for Big Apple bowling, which rebranded as Superbowl Woking
Our role for the developer was to provide a full range of retail advisor services, including the retail delivery management of the scheme, and advising on retailer requirements in the basebuild design. We also wrote the design guide for the development.
One part of our design role was to create white box retail units, suitable for short term lets, which encapsulated the best of the design standards, and provided a suitable neutral backdrop for different retailers.
Initially we were tasked with looking at three units which faced onto the new glass roofed plaza, to support the retail offers which had signed leases and featured in the grand opening on the 23rd March 2022. Two of these units were taken forwards and built, acting as locations for a collaboration with the local Light Box art gallery, and local artists.
The other main aspect of our appointment was to use our experience in Retail Design, and Design Management, to write the new design guide for the scheme, bringing the old centre guidance up to date with a fresh look at retail trends and providing a benchmark which would serve the new combined centre for years to come. We also worked through the centre’s technical guidelines, ensuring that new sustainable guidance was included to encourage retailers to make design decisions based on environmental grounds, such as reducing energy usage and consider more responsible material sourcing for their interiors.
