The Grafton centre is a covered

shopping centre A shopping center ( American English) or shopping centre (Commonwealth English), also called a shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof. The first known colle ...

in the east of central

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. It is one of the three main shopping centres in Cambridge, with Lion Yard and Grand Arcade in the city's centre. The Centre dominates Fitzroy Street and Burleigh Street. The main footprint is linear, running from east to west. It has three atria, the eastern one being the largest. The mall is laid out across two storeys with some of the shops having more than one storey too. Currently more than thirty years old, the Grafton Centre underwent a £30m refurbishment programme in 2017 after being bought by Legal & General for £99m. It has since been sold to Trinity Investment Management for £61.4m. The main retail stores include Boots, Debenhams (the largest store in the centre) and

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. It also has its own five-slot bus stop, a food court, Vue cinema and two

multi-storey car park A multistorey car park ( British and Singapore English) or parking garage (American English), also called a multistory, parking building, parking structure, parkade (mainly Canadian), parking ramp, parking deck or indoor parking, is a bui ...

s, with capacity for 1100 vehicles. Unusually for a shopping centre of its type, the site includes a number of

council flats A council house is a form of British public housing built by local authorities. A council estate is a building complex containing a number of council houses and other amenities like schools and shops. Construction took place mainly from 1919 a ...

at its western and northern edges.

History

Initial plans for a shopping centre on the site of the Grafton date to the 1950 Holford-Wright Report on the planning of Cambridge. In 1973, plans by architects

Richard Rogers Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside (23 July 1933 – 18 December 2021) was a British architect noted for his modernist and Functionalism (architecture), functionalist designs in high-tech architecture. He was a senior partner a ...

and

Renzo Piano Renzo Piano (; born 14 September 1937) is an Italian architect. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers, 1977), The Shard in London (2012), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (2 ...

, later famed for their Pompidou Centre in

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, were approved by the city council. Later, they were later rejected due to budgetary concerns. Grosvenor Developments took on development from 1978, constructing the Grafton through the early 1980s. It was opened by

Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...

in 1984. During the preceding decade, plans for the development of this approximately "kite"-shaped area of land (at that time dominated by terraced houses dating from the tail end of the previous century, and extensively used for student lodgings) were met with controversy and opposition. During a decade dominated by national indebtedness and economic decline, with investment funds in short supply, progress towards commencement of the development was slow. In 2016 the centre was bought by Legal & General for £99m. In 2017 a £28.5m refurbishment programme was conducted. The refurbishment largely failed to attract more business, with issues compounded by the

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pandemic, and the site was put on sale in 2021. In August 2022, Trinity Investment Management, backed by Angelo Gordon, completed the acquisition of The Grafton shopping centre from Legal & General's LGIM Real Assets for £61.4 million, representing a 50% loss of value in 5 years. Proposed uses for the site include redevelopment for life sciences laboratories.

References

External links

*
Grafton Centre on The Retail Database
{{Shopping centres in the East of England Shopping centres in Cambridgeshire Shops in Cambridge