The Putney Convenience Store at 69 Putney High Street is moving next door to number 67, the unit that spent much of the past year cycling through squatter occupations and High Court proceedings. The owner is aiming to complete the move in the first week of June.
It is, as the newsagents admitted to Putney.news this week, a bit of a mad rush.
The reason for the move is the block itself. Marlborough Property (Putney One) Limited, the same company behind the recently completed M&S refit at 55-61, has applied to Wandsworth Council to refurbish and partially redevelop 63 to 71 Putney High Street. The plans include rebuilding numbers 69 and 71 as a single, larger commercial unit. While the work proceeds, the newsagent at 69 needs somewhere else to go.
Number 67 (owned separately by Corndale Estates Limited) stepped in. Corndale has agreed to take the newsagent as a temporary tenant while the neighbouring units are rebuilt.
So the shop that survived everything is moving into the most eventful address on the street.
What’s being planned
The Marlborough scheme, designed by Floyd Slaski Architects, would refurbish shopfronts across the terrace and add four new residential flats above the shops. Number 67, which sits in the middle of the row in separate ownership, is excluded from the application entirely.
Corndale has broadly supported the plans but objects to one element: six heat pump condenser units proposed for ground-floor rear, which it says would sit one metre from a bedroom window in its building. It wants them moved to the rooftops instead.
The owner of the convenience store has been running down stock to reduce the volume of goods to shift.
The one constant
Regular readers will know 67. The full story of what happened there is in our May piece about the building site it became.
The Putney Convenience Store played its own part of that drama – staff noticed the squatters breaking back into the building and let the police and landlord know. That neighbourliness has its own rewards. Our January coverage of the block’s clearance noted the shop as “the one constant in the whole stretch.”
The renovation at 67 that followed the final eviction in April means the unit should be fitted out in time. Whether it is ready before the newsagent needs to move out of 69 is the question the owner is currently hoping the answer to is yes.
