Following a competitive tender, the London Borough of Waltham Forest has entered into an agreement with Morrisons and Willmott Dixon to develop a 1.5 hectare site in Walthamstow town centre that is currently a council-owned car park and industrial area.

The new mixed-use scheme, which represents a capital investment of over £65 million, will regenerate a strategic part of Walthamstow and create over 500 jobs for local people. The development project will include a 75,000 sq ft modern Morrisons foodstore, a further 30,000 sq ft of non-food retail units plus over 230 one to four bed apartments located above the store.

The regeneration by Morrisons and Willmott Dixon of the site on South Grove, to the south west of Walthamstow High Street and adjacent to the St James Street railway station, will provide a major source of inward investment to Walthamstow, with 350 of job opportunities generated by Morrisons alone.

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The project will see a new community square, a green living wall and space for public art. The proposals will also include new pedestrian and cycle links to improve connections to the town centre together with significant contributions to local transport infrastructure, providing greater accessibility in and around the site for residents, visitors and local workers.

Andrew Telfer, divisional CEO at Willmott Dixon Regen, the Group's specialist provider of development and investment in residential and mixed-tenure property, said: "As the UK’s second largest privately owned contractor, support services provider and developer, we are joining forces with one of the UK’s biggest names in retail to create new homes and retail space that will attract more people to work and live in Walthamstow.

"This is a key part of our strategy to use our construction and development expertise to partner with a company like Morrisons with complementary skills that can make large mixed-use developments like this a reality."

Although known as a major contractor, Willmott Dixon also has a significant development expertise and ambition to create a number of mixed-use sites which will provide residential, retail, leisure and commercial accommodation. It is also firmly committed to sustainable development and is one of the few companies in its sector to appear in the Sunday Times Best Green Companies list for the past three years. Its ‘green’ aspirations also include aiming to be carbon neutral and sending zero waste to landfill by 2012 and it's on track to divert 95 per cent of construction waste away from landfill in 2011.

(CD)