Harvey Shopping Centre

The Harvey Centre opened in 1982 in Harlow, Essex, with approximately 52,000 sqm of gross leasable area as the principal enclosed retail destination for Harlow New Town and the mid-Essex corridor. The centre is owned by NewRiver REIT as the commercial anchor of one of the UK’s most significant post-war planned new towns.

Harlow was designated as a new town in 1947 and developed from the 1950s through the 1970s as a planned overspill community for East London, designed by Frederick Gibberd on garden city principles with distinct residential neighbourhoods, employment zones, and the Harvey and Broad Walk town-centre commercial area at the heart. The Harvey Centre’s position within Gibberd’s town-centre design places it in a pedestrianised commercial area that includes the Water Gardens and the Civic Quarter. The tenant mix serves a working and middle-class Essex catchment with Primark, H&M, Next, and mainstream fashion and lifestyle retail. Harlow’s proximity to the M11 motorway at Junction 7 and the Great Eastern Main Line connection at Harlow Town station provide transit access to London Liverpool Street in approximately 35 minutes and proximity to Stansted Airport.

Harlow’s population of approximately 90,000 provides the immediate base. The mid-Essex catchment from Epping, Bishop’s Stortford, and the Lea Valley corridor extends the regional draw to approximately 250,000. The M11 accessibility and proximity to Stansted Airport give the commercial district an economic connection to the aviation and logistics sector employment that has grown around the airport.

NewRiver REIT manages The Harvey Centre as an Essex new-town retail asset. Harlow’s planned-community origin means the shopping centre was designed as a civic as much as a commercial space, a dual function that creates visit patterns driven by community use of the surrounding public realm alongside conventional retail shopping behaviour.