St George's, Harrow — Local services in London

At George's and St Ann's are two covered shopping centers and situated about 100 meters apart set at right angles to each other as they exit onto at Ann's Road (a pedestrianised shopping street). They are twin centers although not identical. St Ann's has a food fall on the second floor, which extends over a third of the building, with mostly fast food outlets. St George's has a small second floor, but with a cinema and couple of stores. St.Ann's can be accessed via a short walk from the Harrow on the Hill train station and bus station with multiple routes. Cross the road via the traffic light controlled pedestrian crossing and you are in the centre A word of warning here. There is no disabled access to the station. Even a parent with a push chair will face a problem. However I understand that there will be access, once the new apartments looking over the station are finished. First, a little housework needed. With the online maps, most do not show the correct layout of the centre. Primark has just in the last few week moved into the old vacant site left by C and A, with the vacated Primark site yielding a much needed me supermarket in the near future. The Perfume Shop has moved to near the Virgin Store and their former home, a kiosk, has been cleared to create a more open plan. Holland and Barrett have also moved to a much larger store opposite their former position. Both shopping centres have their own multi-level car parks with easy lift access to the shopping and eating areas. There are two sets of double lifts, one set serving the even number of the car park floors and the other the odd numbered floors. Right by one set are a set of really clean and well supervised toilets. Just the other side is a branch of W H Smith with a Post Offfice incorporated at the back of the store. This works really, with what must be the most efficient one in London. There are always at least three people serving and another person helping with customers queries or helping them operate the fast track machines. In this shopping mall there is also a small branch of Boots ( there is a much larger branch in St. George's ). There are the usual other stores; H Samuel, Ernest Jones, Claire's and others Right at end there is branch of the Metro Bank, taking up a large corner site, which can be accessed via the mall or at St Ann's Road. Entering At Ann's Road itself, if you turn right you will see a few places along a branch of Marks and Spencer. Turn left and by At George's is an Argos branch There is a pub opposite with a...

Ok, where do I Start!

I start by saying the good things! it seems like it is improving which is good, new shops are popping up maybe too many of them are food related (restaurants and coffee shops) but it would mean it can maintain the footfall (everyone needs to eat!) i am afraid the good point ends here as the services and facilities can not deal with higher footfall!

car park system is so slow and old it is in a desperate need of renewal, car park spaces are not supporting the number of visitors and specially the car wash on site is taking too many spaces and the car wash staff are rude! so a very stressful and unpleasant experience starts in the car park and it follows as soon as you go to get a lift! the buttons are not interlinked and you would need to press both left and right lifts to have a higher chance of getting a lift! it is not clear if they are going up or down so you may end up spending 2-3 extra minutes to get where you want to! by the time you get to the ground floor you are already stressed enough not to enjoy the rest of your journey :( then you see too many clutter in the main middle corridor there is a permanent one nowadays selling electrical cigarettes which i think should not be there then a Sky one which i think it is just waste of space then there is this threading kiosk which usually have a long queue of frustrated and not very friendly ladies! and then there is the pretzel kiosk which i am glad i could see how they prepare and bake the pretzel because otherwise i might have bought one from them! if you have to use the toilets good luck, by the time you find them (if you still need to go to the toilet ; not wet your pants ) you start worrying about the poor hygiene of the place! on the way getting back to the car the car park experience would haunt the shoppers down again either by a long queue to pay for the car park token (there are 4 machines to pay for car park and most of the time at least 2 f them are broken!) last night we had to queue for 25 mins with a toddler just to pay for our car park! or a long queue on the spiral ramp in in your car!

it is not a nice and calm experience by any means.

i hope management take action to change some things around. having a shopping centre with higher standards would encourage a better...

Review a shopping centre they said. Can't be that hard, right? There's so much to say about a shopping centre.

The St George's Centre is without doubt in Harrow, and contains a number of different shops. There's a large Boots which has very little to distinguish itself from other Boots, and a Wilkinson which is also like other Wilkinsons, but is also on two stories. A lot of other small shops which, now I think about it, failed to make sufficient impression on me for me to even remember what they sold. I think there might have also been a Starbucks or a Costa.

And after you've visited these shops, don't forget there's so much more. Although it seems I just did. Upstairs there's definitely a McDonald's, I definitely saw that, and some kind of pizza place maybe? And almost certainly Fatty Arbuckle's, although maybe it was a Frankie and Bennys or even a Five Guys. I seem to remember seeing a poster about a creche or a nursery or something like that, next to what might be a gym.

It was very clean, I remember that. It's got this unusual architectural style with mosaic patterns, white pillars and this great big atrium. There's like these dragon gargoyles if you look up, and then there's this massive dome. It's quite attractive to look at, it really is.

Finally, of course, there's the Warner cinema or whatever they're calling them now. It's got a lot of screens and a lot of them were showing that film everyone was on about. You know, the sequel or the remake or something. It might even be a trilogy by now, I really should look that up.

I actually really like this place, although now I think of it, I'm not...