The Galleries Retail Park

Together the Galleries Shopping Centre and Retail Park are the main retail buildings in Washington town centre. As part of a strategic plan for renewal and development the new Retail Park building opened opposite the northern entrance of the Galleries Shopping Centre in 2008. It is built on the site formerly occupied by Coniston House. The refurbishment of the existing centre will continue a programme of renewal with the installation of a new glazed roof above the central mall and new entrances to the north, southwest and southeast.

The new Retail Park Building was designed by Leslie Jones Architects, a practice with extensive experience and a clear understanding of the retail sector, at the forefront of the industry.   The original centre was built in two phases in the 1960s and 1970s. The new development is designed to work in tandem with the existing shopping centre which is being brought up to date aesthetically, its entrances reconfigured to increase the amount of daylight entering the interior. 

103,000 sq ft. of additional space has been added in the new retail development so that additional popular brand outlets can be attracted. A new bus terminal adjacent to the shopping centre accommodates the 1100 buses travelling to the Galleries each day.

The new retail park makes extensive use of a new Trimo panel in various shades of Colorcoat Prisma® in blue and silver variously described as awesome and funky. The bi-modular rock wool panel TrimoRaster is an important and innovative product in the modular facades market. TrimoRaster offers a self-supporting, insulated and fire proofed façade with an emphasised joint where the longitudinal and transverse joints are optically the same. The TrimoRaster panel featured at the Galleries consists of a double sided galvanised steel sheet from Tata Steel finished in Colorcoat Prisma®. The panel is insulated in non-combustible mineral wool. The external sheet is smooth and the internal has a v-profile 0.5mm. The simplicity of the TrimoRaster panel offers great versatility in design.

The Galleries shopping Centre attracted 13 million shoppers last year and the centre management anticipate that that figure will rise once the proposals for the centre are complete.
Prudential’s investment comes after an intensive and lengthy period of analysis of options available and is part of the company’s ongoing strategy to improve Washington Town Centre. Since Prudential purchased the centre in 1998, customer visits have increased year on year. Last year’s figure was 6% better than the year before.

The juxtaposition of the two shopping areas makes a trip to the Galleries more of an ‘occasion’ for the shoppers of Washington.  The architect’s imaginative use of Colorcoat Prisma® in blue and silver on the new TrimoRaster panelled cladding creates a sense of excitement which was absent from the 1960s centre, giving a sense to the town centre of a new beginning.

“This new development will significantly improve Washington as a shopping destination and will provide our customers with even more choice,” said Juliette Coard, the Galleries centre manager.