A summer and seaside experience has come to Croydon’s Centrale rooftop.

Costa del Croydon opened on August 1 and will remain open until August 28, offering a seaside experience on the rooftop of the Centrale Centre’s multi-storey car park throughout the summer.

The mastermind behind Costa del Croydon is Dominique Stagg, who spoke exclusively to Your Local Guardian about her plan.

The 38-year-old said: “There a lot of families in Croydon who don’t have access to outdoor spaces.

“A lot of them live in flats and some young people have never seen a beach before, so I wanted to create something different that hasn’t been done before in Croydon.”

The nearest beach from Croydon is over an hour away, so Dominique wanted to bring the beach to Croydon residents.

Dominique added: “Part of my role is to bring events and enlightenment into Croydon on behalf of the shopping centres, so I always look for new exciting things that are a little bit different.

“It’s also to try and make people want to visit Croydon.”

Costa del Croydon is the biggest pop-up event that Dominique has organised in Croydon.

It’s free entry to get into Costa del Croydon, which Dominique said she chose to do deliberately.

She said: “All the events that I do at Centrale, I purposely make them free because there’s a lot of families in Croydon that can’t afford to go a lot of the events that are in London.

“So, I always like to put on fun events and give families something for them to do over the half term and school holidays with their kids that doesn’t cost a lot.

“That’s mainly my motivation.”

There are two sessions at Costa del Croydon, one from 11.30am to 3pm, and a second from 3.30pm to 7.30pm.

Dominique said this is to appeal to families as well as the after-work crowd.

She added: “That’s why we’ve got the food and the bar, so we can try and create that kind of social positive invite to everyone.”

Dominique pitched the idea of Costa del Croydon in September 2023 and described it as a “wildcard idea which everyone on the board loved”, and planning began the next month.

She said there was never a moment in the planning where she thought she couldn’t do this, and always found a solution when there were doubts.

Dominique said: “I was surrounded by a team who wanted to support me.”

On Tuesdays, the Croydon Voluntary Action (CVA) Group will be running community days at Costa del Croydon.

Dominique shared that the volunteers would come along on Tuesdays to do activities for the community, such as chair yoga, poem and spoken work classes, and SEND sessions for children when there is a reduced capacity.

She also has a weather contingency plan for when it inevitably rains this August.

She said: “In Centrale, we’ve got an event space by Sports Direct, so if it rains, the free activities that we’ve got going on will take place inside the centre instead.

“So, while the sand will stay on the rooftop, the activities will carry on inside, like yoga, street art classes, and the steel band.”

Dominique advises that visitors pre-book on the Centrale website, but said there are still spaces for people who turn up on the day.