{"id":23273,"date":"2025-11-03T14:01:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T14:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/23273\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T14:01:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T14:01:06","slug":"new-look-for-reading-town-centre-shops-arcade-approved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/23273\/","title":{"rendered":"New look for Reading town centre shops arcade approved"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n  The Harris Arcade indoor shopping mall is a business area for independent shops similar to the Burlington Arcade in London.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The arcade is home to a range of businesses, including Crunch Comics, The Sound Machine records store, Shave &amp; Coster tobacconists and a smoothie drinks company.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  People can also eat out at Pierre&#8217;s Baguettes and Zorba&#8217;s Kebabs, and buy antiques, hats from the Adrienne Henry Millinery and other special items from the traders within.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The arcade provides a walking route between Friar Street and Station Road.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The owning company applied to repaint the wood and existing painted surfaces that make up the arcade in a planning application to Reading Borough Council.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Originally, the company wanted to paint the wood in a willow tree colour.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  However, following negotiations with council officers, the colour has been changed to &#8216;Burford Green&#8217;.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  In a report into the application, planning officer\u00a0Jonathan Markwell wrote: \u201cThe proposed works are considered appropriate in terms of protecting and enhancing the significance of the heritage asset.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cIt is hoped that the repainting\u00a0works will enliven the units and wider Arcade, to help enhance the vitality and viability of the wider retail centre.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The repainting project was approved by the council last month.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The Harris Arcade is owned by global capital management company AEW, which purchased the arcade and surrounding properties in 2022.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Since then, The Pitcher &amp; Piano bar has been renamed The Signal Box, and Revolution has been replaced with Boom Battle Bar, which opened this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Harris Arcade indoor shopping mall is a business area for independent shops similar to the Burlington Arcade&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-23273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}