The new Brent Cross West station serves two very different communities either side of the tracks. You could call them Brent Cross West West and Brent Cross West East. Neither is buzzing with potential passengers.
Brent Cross West West is commercial and car-dominated, as befits the concrete scar where the Edgware Road meets the North Circular. Staples Corner is close by, a Ballardian landscape where the M1 makes a break for The North and pedestrians are very much an afterthought. The new station turfs out travellers a short distance to the south on a service road round the back of a retail park. Turn left and you'll end up walking along the back of a Bestway cash and carry before eventually escaping by the Shell garage. Turn right and you'll pass Flip Out, a large box which advertises itself as the UK's most advanced trampoline arena, trick park and ninja skills centre. Further along are Carpetright, Dreams, Currys, Harveys and other out-of-town stores generally frequented by folk in cars, who may need dodging. It's also here we find the new terminus for the 316 bus which was extended from Cricklewood on Sunday, although two other bus routes already stop 100m away so it's not really a gamechanger.
The most straight-forward-looking exit is straight ahead into a car park used by customers of Decathlon, Wren kitchens and Bensons beds. But there's no pavement, not even a footpath, and to break through the shrubbery onto the A5 requires risking a brief slip road used by inbound shoppers. Crossing the Edgware Road is a more significant trial, this being where the flyover lands, so to reach that intriguing oriental temple on the other side requires a lengthy diversion either over or under it. Had the station predated the dual carriageway they'd probably have added a subway or a bridge but instead the disconnect is real. That temple turns out to be part of the Wing Yip Cricklewood Superstore, a longstanding Chinese supermarket on a monumental scale, which suddenly finds itself a short train journey from central London.
By crossing the road we've entered Brent, and also a hinterland of low key industrial estates. Here we find warehouse-lined cul-de-sacs, repurposed interwar depots and mattress-strewn business centres. Here you can get your limo repaired, a t-shirt printed or a granite worktop made to measure, plus a multiplicity of other businesses which keep the lower end of the economy ticking over. Eventually the pebbledashed streets of upper Dollis Hill kick in, but don't expect this side of the tracks to be sending a heavy footfall to the new station. It's not hard to imagine this lacklustre commercial mix transformed into something highrise, but Brent's plans haven't yet reached strategic masterplan stage so the current inhabitants should be safe for some time to come.
Brent Cross West East is a completely different beast, a levelled landscape which used to be a similarly low key industrial estate. But Barnet council have long eyed it up as their key regeneration zone so it's now arising as a brand new neighbourhood branded Brent Cross Town. They'd have loved it if the new station had been called BCT rather than BCW, but no established centre of gravity should be shifted without good reason so geography thankfully won out. When Brent Cross Town is finished it'll be a massive T-shaped development with the stem pointing away from the railway, but for now the zone closest to the station entrance remains defiantly empty.
Not 100% empty because two litter bins, a bike rack and two bus stops are in situ, not to mention an inordinate amount of yellow hoardings. But as yet it's a world away from becoming Copper Square, the hub of a mixed use edu-office development, and even its buses aren't due to turn up until next year when the connecting roads are finally finished. What the developers hope visitors will do is walk straight ahead along the long curving walkway whose walls are emblazoned with upbeat marketingspeak and greenwash. Heading left instead takes you past a mothballed bus stand and through a security gate to a zone in flux between grim and shiny, and eventually to the wrong side of the North Circular. It isn't nice. Meanwhile the road to the right is just a longer dogleg diversion through yet more razed yellow wasteland to the fringes of a stripe of undulating greenspace. Behold Claremont Park.
The developers have yet to finish any of their initial blocks of flats but they have finished two parks because they know this sells. If the parks are this good, the patter goes, imagine how great the homes will be. This one's thin but very pleasant with contouring, scattered lumps of rock, an eco-lake and a decent-sized adventure playground. Up top is a basketball zone, in the middle is a small amphitheatre and along one side is a block containing toilets and an ice cream kiosk. You'd be pleased if your local park had all of that. For now however the slides and picnic tables are the preserve of those lucky enough to live on the adjacent council estate, particularly Clitterhouse Crescent where an alleyway abruptly returns you to the mid 20th century.
Brent Terrace is even more of an outlier, an incredibly long row of 100+ railwaymen's cottages built in the 1890s, all squished together along a single side of the road. Front doors face the railway not the road, those who drive in have to drive out the same way, and if you come on bin day the already-narrow pavement is repeatedly blocked. Should you ever find yourself writing a book called Streets Which Look Like Nowhere Else In London, do visit. But over subsequent years the opposite side has slowly gained contrasting flats, the latest of which are generic bricky blocks for shared ownership (and only half-finished so there's still time to chip in your 25%). It's all somewhat jarring, but not quite as odd as stepping back through what used to be an iron gate into an industrial estate and is now the edge of redevelopment nirvana.
At the far end of Claremont Park, past the densely packed skeletons of crane-topped flats, sits a standalone lowrise timber building. They could have called it the Sales Suite but have instead named it the Visitor Pavilion because that lures more people inside. One end is a cafe that does perfectly decent coffee, so I'm told, while the main event is a cavernous exhibition space where the star attraction is a large 3D model. On Sunday morning this space was packed with dignitaries watching inspiring videos and guzzling complimentary pastries, but most of the week it's staffed by an engagement team keen to answer your questions and point out all the upsides. Given that the last of the 6700 homes isn't due to be finished until the end of the 2030s their jobs looks pretty secure.
Across the street a parade of formerly-shuttered shops has been reborn as a gentrified selection of eateries, because some people won't move here unless they can buy home-baked buns and wood-fired pizza. Beyond the far railings the developers intend to make a landgrab for Clitterhouse Playing Fields by swapping large swathes of grass for astroturf and hireable-pitches. Existing locals aren't best pleased. And if you look carefully beside the constructor's entrance a temporary footpath meanders off around the far side of the building site, relatively unpleasantly, which might ultimately take you to Brent Cross Shopping Centre after the best part of 15 minutes. This new station isn't yet genuinely useful for access to local attractions, more a honeytrap for potential future residents, but do come and see what's here before an economic whirlwind transforms it utterly.
