£25m loan to rescue Summer Row

Friday 26th February 2010, 11:30AM GMT.

£25m loan to rescue Summer Row

The Summer Row shopping dream in Wolverhampton could be saved – with a £25 million bank loan from the city council.

The council is looking into borrowing the cash to help fund the £300 million shopping complex, which is currently shelved due to a lack of cash.

The Summer Row development would be anchored by Debenhams and Marks & Spencer but has been on hold since a crucial funding deal with three Irish backers collapsed in December 2008.

Developer Multi has spent months trying to secure half of the cash – about £150m – to allow it to go ahead.

In December a troubleshooting firm of consultants from Ernst & Young was appointed to get the project back on track. And today, council bosses revealed one of the options being considered was a bank loan as well as inquiring about grants.

Wolverhampton City Council interim chief executive Steve Boyes said: “The council will work night and day to make sure this project goes ahead.

“Prudential borrowing is not a unique thing. A lot of councils use it to invest in the regeneration of their areas. It is all about assessing the risks involved. Taxpayers would not end up paying this money back.”

Mr Boyes said the council would not confirm how much it would be willing to lend to the scheme, but has indicated that £25 million was at the “higher end” of that being considered.

Any plans concerning Summer Row are likely to come before the council’s cabinet at the end of March.

Compulsory purchase orders on around 200 businesses that will have to be knocked down to make way for the development run out in February next year.

Once the orders expire, the council and developers would have to go back to the drawing board. But Mr Boyes today insisted he was “far more optimistic than six months ago” that the 600,000 sq ft development will still go ahead.


  1. 1
    steveBriscoe

    Its something i would worry about if i was a council tax payer. with rows of empty shops in the city. Summer Row is a luxury that the city can not afford in these hard times .

    Friends of dudley town centre

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  2. 2
    Big D

    Just what we need – more shops !!

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  3. 3
    Tettenhallwolves

    This will never get started!! Like so many things in this city, i.e. The Sainsburys/Tesco fiasco on the ring road.
    We have more empty shops in the UK than any other city/town?
    I was amazed to see work had started on the derelict fuel station @ Newbridge but it is only being cleared because Esso now want rid of it! How could the planners at this council throw plans out to re open it twice saying it was not in keeping with the local area??? What is in keeping with local areas of Wolverhampton? Run down ramshackled properties empty buildings & shops, look @ Chapel Ash what an embarrassment to Wolverhampton.
    Get your fingers out Wolverhampton Council and get this city moving instead of holding it back all the time.
    Lets get things moving and show people that have labeled us The 5th worse city in the world what we are about!!

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  4. 4
    Jack the Hat

    Wolverhampton Council will be ‘Pouring Money Down The Drain!’ Wolverhampton has been a ‘Commercial Graveyard’ for the last 30 Years! – You cannot give it away!

    Believe me! – They have tried!

    Why not create a development that will create ‘Real Jobs!’ – Not ‘Plastic Carrier-Bag Jobs?’

    ‘A Nation Yawns!’

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  5. 5
    philip Lewis

    More shops at Summer Row ? They will never be viable. No wonder the developer is coming with the begging bowl from the tax payer.
    If Councillors think this is a money making proposition, then let them put their own private savings into into it ! Do not ask me to contribute .
    One day there will be a resolution of the TESCO – SAINSBURY dispute.
    One or the other, or even both, will build yet another supermarket.
    Meantime the Internet is increasingly being used by consumers,and others go out to the covered shopping centres of the Bull Ring and ~Merry Hill. Wolverhampton is too late, and should now make alternative plans.
    At the local elections let voters make it clear to candidates – NO
    TAXPAYERS money for this speculation.

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  6. 6
    Treacle

    I don’t think that £25million is going to go very far seen as £300million is needed to complete it, it’s just lip service by the council to make it look like they are trying to make an effort, and as Steve said on the first comment there are a load of shops that need filling in the main shopping area, perhaps the money would be better spent enticing people to take those on.

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  7. 7
    joseph C

    Dont get me started, do these idiots at the council think people will constantly swallow these fairy-tales of super development after super development? Us in the business of development are well aware what is feasable and is not, every proposal that has been trumpeted by the council spin machine over the past 20 years has been just that. By and large the council has been out-manouvered by profit hungry chancers or anti-competition supermarkets. Summer row is dead in the water and has been since 2008;the bridge over St Peters ringway is just fantasy ( that was my idea by the way, in a conversation with a Senior Officer in 2006 !): the half wits in planning not only get had over, but ignore vital gateways into the city with their dogmatic approach (Tettenhall rd abandoned petrol station abomination).

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  8. 8
    samg

    u might have the summer row open in the future what will be in there after spending all the money on developing then ur spending money to advertise the vacant shop units all the well known retailers are either bankrupt or struggling or just vanished from the high st.check ur local high street and see the vacant shops .

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  9. 9
    Harris

    I work in the area that Summer Row would be situated and I think I speak for most people when I say to Wolverhampton Council “JUST BLOODY SORT IT OUT” either yes or no.
    Having a compulsory service order served on the property I work in has also affected investment into the business at a time where money is hard enough to come by.
    I have been wondering for a long time now if I will have a job to go to obviously depending on the vagaries of our current council.
    Instead of spending council tax payers money on a study on so called efficiency savings just decide what you are going to do with Summer Row.

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  10. 10
    Mahatma G

    Yet again the Council and it’s officers are attempting to pull the wool over our eyes,spinning their way through a hopeless situation.The real problem the City has is the quality of the Councillors and it’s Officers. Most of those employed to carry out policy are of the same ilk, time-served in Public sector, moving from department to department or Council to Council with little exposure to the skills and practices of the private sector; It may be unfair to single out anyone individual, but the attitude of the present City Centre Manager on radio WM recently displayed incredible niavity in the ways of the world quote, ” now all the other Cities/Towns/Villages etc have been redeveloped in the boom years, the developers will now have to look at WOLVERHAMPTON for future projects”, that may not be exact verbatum, but that was what she meant!!( mind you, that job was vacated by it’s long term incumbent, who’s replacement, after barely 6 months, scattered off to Blackpool when he saw the situation he had been left in). All new jobs should NOT go to those in similar positions in this or other Councils, now is the time to bring in those with real world experience and an efficient, forward thinking, can do approach to the Council; It may be too late to reinvent the City, but at least give it a try!!

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  11. 11
    matt

    Abandon it. Spend a few million on what is there already. The back of the Walfrun Center is a mess but so then is New Street Station and look what they are going to do with that with a facelift. A lot of the buildings on the other side of the street are lovely old buildings which with a little TLC could be bought back to their former glory. Look at Snowhill and what has been achieved there …. Quality !

    I’m from Birmingham [but live in Wolverhampton] and although the Bullring is fantastic there is a severe lack of small independent shops in the city center. What we have here is is a fantastic asset and we should embrace it and invest in it.

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  12. 12
    matt

    Drop it.

    Spend a few million on what is there already. The back of the Walfrun Center is a mess but so then is New Street Station and look what they are going to do with that with a facelift. A lot of the buildings on the other side of the street are lovely old buildings which with a little TLC could be bought back to their former glory. Look at Snowhill and what has been achieved there …. Quality !

    I’m from Birmingham [but live in Wolverhampton] and although the Bullring is fantastic there is a severe lack of small independent shops in the city center. What we have here is is a fantastic asset and we should embrace it and invest in it.

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  13. 13
    wise man of wolvo

    the good people of brum were saying simular comments as above about the redevelopment of the bull ring and thats turned into one of the most visited shoping centres in the country if not europe and its also drawn in investment to other parts of the city. in my opinion if we can get summer row up and running it could be the dawning of a new era for wolverhampton as a city, people have got money to spend but lets face it its not a very exciting place to shop and the good folk of wolvo are going to do their shopping at telford merry hill and brum.

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  14. 14
    Danimal

    There are loads of empty shops in town, do we need more? I think we should be sensible here people. £25M, hmmmm 83.3 more Fountains please!

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  15. 15
    Barry Hodgson

    It’s easy to waste money when it’s not your own – council tax payers will rightfully revolt if the council borrows money to fund ……. more shops !
    Who’s kidding who?
    There are now more shops in Wolverhampton than the populace need, why add to the competition for a declining customer base?
    Better to concentrate on bringing into the Summer Row area some organisations and edifices related to current growth and needs. For example, let’s have a huge labour exchange, a West Midlands asylum seeker’s orientation centre, several more gigantic mosques, a single mother’s day centre, drug rehabilitation organisation, Brook Sex Advice clinic, immigrants’ language training school, Youth Club for street yobs, hostel for the homeless and repossessed, skid pan for boy racers, etc, etc. OR, just a huge, free, car park, to get shoppers back into Wolverhampton and revive the flagging market.
    But forget about more shops !

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  16. 16
    gazwolvo

    oooh a 25M loan. i wonder whos paying that back?…..oh yes ME!

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  17. 17
    Martin

    Covered shopping centre is more needed than an opening air shopping street. Certainly England would have cooler Winter in the future. I’m a geographer and i know its wrong that global warming would make English Winter warmer. We’ve got plenty of opening air shopping street already such as Dudley town centre but the covered shopping area like Merry Hill and Bullring are so overcrowded! Now people might not enjoy shopping amidst a chilly place.

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  18. 18
    Paul

    There are already many empty shops in the town, why build more? Even if they are filled chances are it will just be by shops moving from other parts of the town! (The Merry Hill Centre effect)

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