A STRUGGLING shopping centre could be set for demolition as the firm behind the Silver Hill scheme eyes up another piece of central Winchester.

The Brooks Centre will be bulldozed and replaced by new streets if TIAA Henderson buys the block from administrators, a senior director revealed.

The indoor shopping complex in the middle of Silver Hill is set to be sold after its owners collapsed last month.

Henderson bosses are monitoring the situation with accountants KPMG and could move for the centre, with development director Martin Perry warning that discount retail which could be introduced by other bidders would damage the quality of their regeneration scheme.

“My real worry is that somebody will buy The Brooks to take it down-market,” he told the Hampshire Chronicle.

“It will affect the retailers that you can get into the scheme. If we were able to get hold of The Brooks we would seek redevelopment.”

The shopping block, which Mr Perry described as “poor” and “very, very quiet”, opened in 1991 and has rarely been fully let.

“The Brooks desperately needs sorting out,” he added. “The Brooks by its very design is fundamentally flawed. You can’t refurbish or manipulate that.

“Winchester should be a town of streets and squares and wandering around. It’s not a town of covered shopping centres.”

But he acknowledged that the public would “probably not want” Henderson to buy The Brooks amid ongoing opposition to Silver Hill.

He said: “The town is in much better hands with an organisation that’s thinking far more about the future than is thinking about an immediate profit, but taking on more when there is already a concern amongst people that we’re doing too much harm is something that we’d have to think about.

“We don’t want to appear megalomaniacs.”