The changing landscape of Maidenhead

Michael Stone, managing partner at Colemans Solicitors , talks about the changing face of Maidenhead over the past 30 years

Who we are

Colemans have been servicing both the commercial and private legal needs of the community in Berkshire since 1948 and in this article, I shall look at the Maidenhead area particularly over the past thirty years and at some of the more recent development projects in the town, some of which I have been involved with personally.

The Maidenhead office of Colemans opened some 40 years ago with the firm offering commercial property advice, company and commercial advice and litigation advice, setting us apart from local competitors as we were then the only firm in Maidenhead offering such a wide spread of commercial support. The firm also undertook private client work to ensure that it serviced the local community needs. The firm still undertakes all of these areas of law but has over the past thirty years developed a particular specialism in commercial property within the Maidenhead area.

Commercial development over the years

Over the past 30 years, I have acquired office leases on behalf of Cincom Systems UK. I have helped Cincom move offices, dispose of its old premises and negotiated the new head lease on its prestige headquarters building, 1 Grenfell Road, which is adjacent to Maidenhead Railway Station. This became one of Maidenhead’s first HQ buildings and subsequently heralded the start of the improvement in office space at that end of the town. Over the years, I have helped Cincom with their underletting’s of the same building and with the subsequent 5 current under leases.

New and good quality offices subsequently continued along King Street towards the Town Centre and beyond the main line railway bridge towards Windsor. From this, I began to see the early beginnings of the redevelopment of the periphery of Maidenhead town centre.

The local council were resistant to change for decades in Maidenhead thereby resulting in fragmented development over the years but have more recently embraced the Programme for the Regeneration of Maidenhead (PROM) and this has been gaining momentum for the redevelopment of Maidenhead through a consortium of the local council, stakeholders and developers. The consortium has been actively encouraging some big businesses to move their HQ’s to Maidenhead. This programme has proven to be successful with a significant number of sites being granted planning permission and some are developed and now coming to fruition.

Crossrail will also significantly improve the travel links to the City of London and has already assisted businesses servicing clients and customers in London to consider relocating their businesses to Maidenhead to avail themselves of the lower overheads and the fantastic quality of life Maidenhead has to offer.

Colemans’ one step ahead of the redevelopment

Having started my career in local government specialising in town and county planning and commercial property, this has proved invaluable to me over the years as I have considerable insight into the mechanisms of local government and town planning departments in particular. This knowledge enabled us here at Colemans to help secure planning permission for redevelopment in early 2002 of our former offices at 10/11 Bridge Avenue. This redevelopment took place a decade before further schemes of this nature successfully came forward in Bridge Avenue.

We also secured planning permission for the redevelopment of our main office as it was at 27 Marlow Road enabling us to move to our current purpose built offices in 2004.

More recently, I have once again secured planning permission for the redevelopment of our existing offices at 21 Marlow Road and later this year, Colemans shall be moving to new prestigious commercial offices elsewhere within Maidenhead.

These are exciting times for Colemans, the local community and businesses within Maidenhead. While the £1billion redevelopment programme for Maidenhead will take years to complete, we shall soon see and benefit from a more vibrant and affluent Maidenhead.

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This post was written by Colemans Solicitors LLP