IN Brief:
- Brentwood Borough Council has appointed Willmott Dixon Developments and Milligan as its Baytree development partners.
- The first phase centres on a cinema-led leisure quarter with food, drink and upgraded public realm.
- Land at the rear of the shopping centre will be prepared separately for potential future residential development.
Willmott Dixon Developments and Milligan have been formally appointed by Brentwood Borough Council to progress redevelopment of Baytree Shopping Centre, establishing a development partnership for a town-centre project valued at more than £100m.
The agreed approach divides the site into two principal areas. The front of Baytree is intended to become a leisure quarter centred on a cinema, food and drink uses and upgraded public space, while land at the rear will be prepared separately for potential residential redevelopment.
Public realm around the ruins of the Chapel of St Thomas à Becket also forms part of the leisure proposal. The retained medieval remains sit close to the existing centre, requiring new landscaping and pedestrian routes to work around a protected historic structure rather than treating the space as unrestricted redevelopment land.
Brentwood Borough Council is committing more than £6m towards its town-centre regeneration programme. Appointment of Willmott Dixon Developments and Milligan follows a feasibility review that considered how the centre could be reworked after years of discussion around its future.
The preferred route separates the cinema and leisure work from demolition and redevelopment of the rear land. That division allows the two areas to proceed through different planning and commercial programmes while still sharing infrastructure and access around the wider site.
Leisure uses place different requirements on the building than the retail accommodation Baytree was originally designed to support. Cinema auditoria need large clear internal volumes, acoustic separation and carefully controlled access routes, while food and drink units introduce extraction, drainage, waste storage and delivery requirements that have to be coordinated across several operators.
Retaining or adapting parts of the existing shopping centre will therefore depend on whether its structural grid, floor-to-floor heights and servicing routes can accommodate those uses. Where they cannot, demolition or substantial alteration may be required before the new programme can be fitted into the site.
The cinema itself will influence more than the internal arrangement. Evening audiences change how the centre operates across the day, increasing the importance of lighting, pedestrian routes and connections to surrounding streets after conventional retail trading hours.
Restaurants and bars introduce a similar extension of operating hours. Their back-of-house servicing must be separated from public space where possible, while refuse collection, delivery access and kitchen extraction cannot be left until individual tenants begin fitting out units.
Those requirements will have to be reconciled with the chapel ruins and the council’s intention to improve public realm around them. Finished levels, drainage, accessibility and seating around the historic structure must connect with entrances to the new leisure uses without compromising the protected remains.
The rear site presents a separate development problem. Preparing it for housing may require demolition, utilities work and new access before a residential partner can progress a detailed scheme, making land preparation an infrastructure phase rather than simply a planning exercise.
Separating the rear land also allows the council and its partners to develop the residential proposition without holding up the leisure quarter until every housing parameter is fixed. The two areas still have to work together where roads, servicing or utilities cross the wider Baytree site.
Willmott Dixon Developments brings development-management capability backed by the wider Willmott Dixon group, while Milligan specialises in retail and mixed-use regeneration. The appointment has been made through the Pagabo Developer Led framework.
A framework appointment establishes the development team but does not remove the design and approval stages required before construction. Existing-building surveys, cost planning, planning applications, demolition strategy and tenant requirements still have to be resolved before main works can begin.
Structural surveys will be particularly important if elements of the existing centre are to remain. Shopping centres are often altered repeatedly through their operating lives as units are combined or divided and services are rerouted, meaning record information may not fully describe what contractors find once intrusive work begins.
The development team will also have to decide how much of Baytree can remain operational during construction. Keeping parts of a retail centre open can preserve trading but imposes restrictions on hoarding, deliveries, fire routes, noise and temporary services that can lengthen or complicate the programme.
Full closure simplifies possession of the site but carries different commercial and town-centre consequences. The eventual phasing strategy will therefore depend on how much existing structure is retained and where demolition is required to accommodate the leisure uses.
The council’s appointment moves Baytree from feasibility into a defined development structure, but the next milestones are technical rather than ceremonial. Surveys, planning, demolition packages and detailed leisure requirements now have to establish what can be built, retained and operated across the existing centre.
Only once those questions are resolved can the £100m-plus regeneration move into a main construction phase. The development partners now have responsibility for converting the cinema-led concept and rear residential land into a buildable sequence rather than another iteration of the long-running town-centre proposal.
