Atria Watford is a shopping centre in the middle of Watford, Hertfordshire, England. It opened in June 1992 as the Harlequin Shopping Centre. The centre was rebranded as intu Watford in 2013 following the renaming of its parent Capital Shopping Centres Group as Intu Properties. It received its current name in March 2021 by the new owners, Global Mutual. Atria Watford is scheduled to be renamed back to the Harlequin in Summer 2025. The building is glass roofed with symmetrical malls. The

anchor store In North American, Australian and New Zealand retail, an "anchor tenant", sometimes called an "anchor store", "draw tenant", or "key tenant", is a considerably larger tenant in a shopping mall, often a department store or retail chain. They are ...

s of the centre were branches of

John Lewis John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American civil rights activist and politician who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashville ...

(known as Trewins until rebranding in 2001) and

Debenhams Debenhams plc was a British department store chain that operated in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark, as well as franchised locations across Europe and the Asia Pacific. The company was founded in 1778 as a single store in London and gr ...

, until their closure in 2020.

Apple Store The Apple Store is a chain of Retail, retail stores owned and operated by Apple Inc. The stores sell, service and repair various Apple products, including Macintosh, Mac desktop and MacBook laptop personal computers, iPhone smartphones, iPad ta ...

Marks & Spencer Marks and Spencer plc (commonly abbreviated to M&S and colloquially known as Marks & Sparks or simply Marks) is a major British multinational retailer based in London, England, that specialises in selling clothing, beauty products, home produc ...

, Zara and

Next NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) was an American technology company headquartered in Redwood City, California that specialized in computer workstations for higher education and business markets, and later develope ...

continue to operate in the centre.

History

In 1962 there were discussions about development of the site with the plans including a ten-pin bowling alley and 130 flats. The

Sainsbury's J Sainsbury plc, trading as Sainsbury's, is a British supermarket and the second-largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane, London, the company was the largest UK r ...

store on Queen's Road was bought and demolished (1983) to create space for the centre and a warehouse. During the development of the centre, listed high street buildings were renovated and Queen's Road was maintained as a pedestrian cross route through the town. The shopping centre was named and opened by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd (founded 1987, dissolved 2000) in 1990. The name was a winning entry to a local competition; according to the ''Watford Observer'', the name was probably a reference to the nearby railway line, at the time branded the "Harlequin line" as it passed through

Harlesden Harlesden is a district in the London Borough of Brent, north-west London. Located north of the Grand Union Canal and Wormwood Scrubs, the Harrow Road flows through the centre of the area which goes eastwards to Central London and west towar ...

and Queen's Park. Watford Council extended a resident parking permit scheme in 1996 to deal with the parking congestion that had arisen since the opening of the centre. Intu Properties purchased the adjoining Charter Place shopping centre from

Watford Borough Council Watford Borough Council is the local authority for the Watford non-metropolitan district in the south-west of Hertfordshire, England. The council is based in the Town Hall on Hempstead Road. The council comprises 36 councillors plus a directly-el ...

in April 2013. Planning permission was granted in 2014 for Charter Place to be demolished, to make way for a new mixed-use scheme which comprises 16 retail units, a new department store, 11 restaurants and a 9 screen

Cineworld Regal Cineworld Group (trading as Cineworld) is a British cinema operator headquartered in London, England. It is the world's second-largest cinema chain (after AMC Theatres), with 9,139 screens across 747 sites in 10 countries: Bulgaria, Czec ...

cinema, one of which is a high definition

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, which will be integrated into the main Intu Watford centre. Demolition work began in November 2015. On September 27, 2018

opened a new 86,000 sq ft store in the extension, featuring its first redesigned beauty hall. The 400,000 sq ft extension has increased the total size of the shopping centre to 1.15 million sq ft, making it number 18 in the list of the UK biggest retail destinations. File:Harlequin Mall.jpg, The open plan mall of the Harlequin, in the year 2007 File:Harlequin Centre in 2016.jpg, The same area in 2016 Following Intu Properties plc entering administration in June 2020, a subsidiary of the company called Intu SGS received funding to take full control of the centre along with Lakeside, Victoria Centre and Braehead. The transfer from Intu to Intu SGS is expected to take place by the end of 2020, and will involve Global Mutual becoming asset manager of the centres and Savills serving as property manager. On 4 March 2021, new owners Global Mutual announced the renaming of the centre to atria Watford. It is named after the skylights spanning its roof. This announcement caused controversy, with calls to revert the name to the Harlequin.

References

External links

* * {{Shopping centres in the East of England Shopping centres in Hertfordshire Buildings and structures in Watford Shopping malls established in 1992