Just four businesses remain at a town centre leisure complex that cost £75 million to build - despite council bosses being “supremely confident” it would take off. Six years on, KentOnline reporter Chantal Weller looks at why Ashford’s Elwick Place is struggling and what its future holds..
. “I'm sure Elwick Place will be buzzing in six months’ time.” Those were the words of Cllr Gerry Clarkson, the former leader of Ashford Borough Council (ABC), as he opened the authority’s shiny new development in December 2018.
The project saw a cinema, then run by Picturehouse, and a Travelodge hotel built alongside eight restaurant and cafe units which, at the time of opening, all sat empty. “I'm supremely confident that, now the hoardings are down and people can look around the building, there'll be no problem filling them up at all,” Cllr Clarkson (Con) said at the time. However, six years of comings and goings have left just two of those units occupied.
There has been much change around the cinema itself, too, with the Cineworld-owned Picturehouse brand pulling out earlier this year, and ABC choosing to step in to run the six-screen site itself, renaming it ‘The Ashford Cinema’. But why have so many businesses failed to make it work at the site which was previously home to Ashford's market? Only Matches Sports Bar and Snap Fitness are currently occupying spots beneath the cinema and hotel, while some, many under the Travelodge, have never been filled. Cllr Noel O.