A new Marks & Spencer food store opened in South Kilburn yesterday. It is on the ground floor of the controversial development near Queens Park station.
The site has rightly attracted controversy in the past because of its "poor doors" layout, but the food store should be welcome. South Kilburn is one of the few areas in Brent that approximates to a "food desert". This is partly psychological since people in South Kilburn are very reluctant to go on to Salusbury Road. Assuming that South Kilburn goes ahead as a development, it could have the opportunity to remodel itself as a much more liveable space. Sadly, I don't detect much determination in the Council to really think through how to create South Kilburn as a sustainable neighbourhood at the moment.
2 comments:
If South Kilburn is a "food dessert", then it still is - the new m & S is no nearer to most of South Kilburn than the shops on the Kilburn High Road. What does a much more "liveable space" mean? Many of us find South Kilburn very liveable already. What might help would be if Brent ever involved residents in decisions about the area they live in. I don't remember being asked if we want an M & S. After all, if we are all supposed to be "aspirational", why isn't it a Waitrose?
If this new M & S is such an asset in South Kilburn as Brent Council seems to believe, perhaps they should persuade M & S to refer to it as being in Kilburn and not Queens Park. But then again, M & S can't even bring themselves to mention Kilburn in their address for their store at the other end of Kilburn. http://www.marksandspencer.com/MSResStoreFinderGlobalBaseCmd?searchCriteria=nw6+5ta&storeId=10151&langId=-24&catalogId=10051
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