A quirky shopping arcade in Reading town centre will be getting a fresh new look for the first time in years.<\/p>\n
The Harris Arcade indoor shopping mall is a business area for independent shops similar to the Burlington Arcade in London.<\/p>\n
The arcade is home to a range of businesses, including Crunch Comics, The Sound Machine records store, Shave & Coster tobacconists and a smoothie drinks company.<\/p>\n
People can also eat out at Pierre\u2019s Baguettes and Zorba\u2019s Kebabs, and buy antiques, hats from the Adrienne Henry Millinery and other special items from the traders within.<\/p>\n
The arcade provides a walking route between Friar Street and Station Road.<\/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.<\/p>\n
Originally, the company wanted to paint the wood in a willow tree colour.<\/p>\n
However, following negotiations with council officers, the colour has been changed to \u2018Burford Green\u2019.<\/p>\n
In a report into the application, planning officer Jonathan Markwell wrote: \u201cThe proposed works are considered appropriate in terms of protecting and enhancing the significance of the heritage asset.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is hoped that the repainting works will enliven the units and wider Arcade, to help enhance the vitality and viability of the wider retail centre.\u201d<\/p>\n
The repainting project was approved by the council last month.<\/p>\n
The Harris Arcade is owned by global capital management company AEW, which purchased the arcade and surrounding properties in 2022.<\/p>\n
Since then, The Pitcher & Piano bar has been renamed The Signal Box, and Revolution has been replaced with Boom Battle Bar, which opened this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A quirky shopping arcade in Reading town centre will be getting a fresh new look for the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-28938","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\/28938","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=28938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}