CHATHAM
Leaky roof and neglected shop at Chatham's Pentagon Centre to be repaired in £2.4m project
Medway Council has ringfenced £2.4 million for critical improvements to the Pentagon Centre in Chatham.
The funding will be used to fix part of the shopping centre’s leaky roof after years of deterioration and water buckets becoming commonplace.
As part of the plans, the long-empty Poundworld store at 205 High Street will also be fully refurbished to bring it back into use ready for an incoming tenant.
The building has sat empty since 2018 after Poundworld collapsed into administration and is now in a very poor state of repair, with much of its interior gutted.
It was purpose-built in 1911 as the National Electric Cinema, before closing in 1951 and it was later occupied by retailers MK One and Internacionale.
Other improvements in the council’s scheme will include fire exit upgrades and the resurfacing of the car park and rooftop service road.
Construction work is expected to take place this year, according to the council.
Medway Council bought the shopping centre for £34.8 million in 2019, and has since invested millions of pounds in a bid to replace traditional retail space with more community facilities.
This included the launch of its 14,000 sq ft co-working space, named Ascend, in 2024, targeting small businesses and freelancers.
A new £15 million healthy living centre run by the NHS with two GP surgeries, a pharmacy and community services is also due to open this year.
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Chatham how can this town prosper when every store is closing down slowly people don’t have money to buy everything has become more expensive there are more and more homeless people here so many people Chatham kent is going downhill one by one shops are not here and when they are like this for months and they close or it’s expensive to rent to kill time you have nothing here. it only made it worse
Did they not have a survey before they spent 34 million of public money on buying the place.
You will be wasting money as usual it will only benefit the asylum seekers the high street is over run by them english people are afraid to use .there is no good shopping there car park is used by asylum people over run by them which is for disabled parking
Well I regularly visit Chatham and that’s complete rubbish. As an example, how could you possibly know the people you’re talking about are asylum seekers ? Have you spoken to them ? If you haven’t, you’re just guessing. I have no idea why anyone would be frightened. I’m 75 and I’ve never felt frightened. Perhaps it’s because I don’t get frightened by brown faces.
lol