In January 2019, PRD supported London and Continental Railways and the London Borough of Croydon to make representations into Network Rail’s emerging Croydon Area Rail Study (CARS) a project which incorporates a major upgrade of East Croydon Station.

Through an intensive three month period PRD worked with the wider client, stakeholder and consultant teams to develop an outline masterplan that protected the CARS station design whilst scrutinising the ‘above ground’ station concourse and considered opportunities for value capture through over station and adjacent-to station development, with regard to the aspirations and opportunities to work with adjacent landowners.

PRD guided the development of the outline masterplan to approach the delivery of the station development in a way which will not materially impact the implementation, programme and buildability of the station upgrade.  This also involved developing the masterplan options through the lens of the development market andensuring that design proposals evolved in a market (and planning) facing manner,which would be cognisant of the need for future land transactions and the involvement of third-party developers. 

The work also examined how development could be delivered in a manner which retains inherent flexibility for the future, evaluating a number of differentlayouts to ensure flexibility of the technical interplay of development with the station in terms of retail street frontage, use, height, massing and ownership models.