New Watermark West Quay under construction in Southampton

If you’ve been in Southampton recently, you may have noticed they have started the heavy work on the new extension to West Quay shopping centre, called ‘Watermark’

The first phase is planned to bring

• A 10 screen multiplex cinema
• A new retail or leisure unit facing Harbour Parade
• Up to new 20 restaurants and cafes
• A new public plaza in front of the city’s historic walls

The planned phase 2 will add office space, one or two hotels and more dining options.

It seems a bit heavy on dining options to me – there are already good dining provision in Southampton in West Quay, Oxford Street, Above Bar, Portswood and the Leisure World area – but with the visitor numbers from the existing shopping, IKEA and the revitalised cruise industry there may be enough to support them.

Anyway, what’s really interesting is that they have set up a webcam feed so you can see how the project is going. You can find it here. You can even jump through images to see super high speed building!

More on the project

If you are moving to Southampton or have not head much about the Watermark project, you can find out more:

• Official Site
• Daily Echo – Watermark to create 2,500 jobs
• Invest in Southampton
• Wikipedia entry on Watermark

Watermark is due to open Autumn 2016, so there’s plenty of time for them to find tenants for all the new spaces.