Covent Garden Market Authority (CGMA) stakeholders were called upon to support market traders as well as developers in an unexpected but impassioned speech given by the tenants' association chair Gary Marshall.
Speaking at the CGMA’s stakeholder reception today (6 October), which he does not normally attend, Marshall encouraged stakeholders to “support the blood and heart of New Covent Garden Market, which is the traders”.
The tenants' association chair and MD of wholesaler Bevington Salads has been a vocal opponent of several aspects of New Covent Garden Market’s ongoing redevelopment.
Up to now Marshall believes the market’s traders have been given “a very rough deal” in the regeneration project with the tenants’ association’s main objections centring on parking, splitting wholesalers between different halls, and a reduction in the size of the flower market.
“We believe that the market is too small and we believe that too much interest is being put on luxury flats rather than people that work in the area,” Marshall said, referring to the nextdoor Nine Elms development, which is being organised in conjunction with the Brand New Covent Garden project.
But he stressed his determination to “make our market work”, and work with and “listen to” CGMA's new CEO Daniel Tomkinson, whom he praised for recognising tenants concerns in his own speech at the event.
Talking at his first stakeholder event after just two months in charge, Tomkinson said: “I’m certainly under no illusions as to the scale of the challenge that I have to perform here…We’ve got the entrance plaza relocating; we’ve got car parking that is changing in quite a dramatic way; we’ve got the flower market moving next year and all of these cause concerns and issues, particularly to businesses who’ve played in that environment for a long time.
“We need to make sure we look far enough ahead to see where these issues are coming from and we can have an operational plan in place that enables us to deliver it.”
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