Last hope for Wolverhampton’s Summer Row
Thursday 28th October 2010, 11:30AM BST.
Exclusive - By Victoria Nash: The £300 million Summer Row shopping centre planned for Wolverhampton is being scaled down in a last-ditch bid to secure a backer, it emerged today.
Developers have admitted the plan will be dead if a deal is not signed by next month.
The showpiece complex due to be anchored by Debenhams and Marks & Spencer has been in crisis since a funding deal with an Irish consortium collapsed in December 2008.
Developer Multi has since been trying to secure a deal for half of the money, originally around £150m.
But time is short because compulsory purchase orders on 200 businesses that will be affected by the creation of the 600,000sq ft development, run out in February.
Multi today revealed revised plans were being drawn up to allow the centre to be built, which would see it reduced by 20 per cent.
It is expected this would reduce the cost to around £240m.
Paul Sargent, Managing Director of Multi, said: “By November we have to know where we stand. If there is nothing sorted by then we will have to throw up our hands and admit it can’t happen.
“There is so much to do after getting the money and we have to leave ourselves enough time to do it.
“We want Summer Row to be the catalyst for other people to invest in Wolverhampton.”
Wolverhampton City Council has given itself until next month to decide whether public money should be used to help make the shopping centre in Snow Hill a reality.
More than 70 High Street names are in negotiations to move into the centre including Next, Warehouse, Monsoon and Dorothy Perkins.
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Not sure we should be using tax payers money to fund this!
I think the idea should be thrown out and this will end uncertainty with retailers and may result in a few shops being filled in the mander centre.
The cost of parking is also a major issue for wolverhampton with Bentley Bridge giving free parking and seems to be very busy!
Merry hill also popular common factor – free parking!
Maybe some of the £20m of council money could be used to renovate the market too!
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All it will do is move the decent shops in dudley street to summer row and replace them with what’s at summer row at the moment and a few more charity and pound shops. Then what? we’ll have to develop Dudley street. It’s and endless cycle that has happened in Birmingham. All the shops moved from palisades to bull ring and now the palisades looks like the old bull ring.
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wolverhampton council should fund this to try and regenerate the dying town since house fraser took over beatties it killed the town
look at manchester good shops well maintaned and only 1hr 30 mins away
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I think you’ll find the IRA kick started Manchesters revival not that I am suggesting the same should be done in Wolverhampton but it gave the developers a clean slate.
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wats the point of having brand names when the existing traders are having a tough time has the recessions hitting everyone,
with prices goin up on everything u might have a flashy shopping centre but with no customers who can afford high price items
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Dear Wolverhampton Council.
Why not sort out the mess regarding the Tesco/Sainsbury farce which is now nearing 11 years of flattened wasteland and derelict buildings blotting the ‘city’.
Then sort the other eye sores on the entrances to town which people drive past to get into town.
Eye hospital, Springfield Brewery etc
Then people might actually come here and look at the shops.
Summer Row was always a no go. The second phase was originally for office space at £20 per sq ft. No one in Birmingham pays that now.
Get a grip it was never going to happen.
Council you missed a treat when Springfield Brewery burnt down mysteriously (twice). This was the development you should have done and blew it.
Sort it out.
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Totally agree – absolutely right. The Town (City) Centre and surrounds looks like a slum area – no wonder people are staying away in droves. Wolverhampton has missed the boat yet again due to political infighting at the Kremlin building aka the Civic Centre. About time the powers that be came down from their Ivory towers and looked around to see what their incompetence and lack of vision has done !!!
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The Tesco/Sainsbury farce is down to the supermarkets, neither own the the site outright and neither will sell to the other. The courts blocked the council from a compulsory purchase.
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Why not just give up on this eyesore?
Development on the cheap is going to be just that,
cheap, and in no time at all tatty and run down all over again.
Who’d want to set up a shop in this area with so
many derelict and empty? When they can’t even fill the old Woolworth’s store in the Mander Centre?
Do we need that many shops?
Flatten the whole Summer Row area and make a green area, a park, mixed with some decent low cost car parking. Run the metro loop through there on its way to the market and the Molineux.
The present tatty depressing mess is an insult to all Wulfrunians. Treat our city with some respect, please.
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I have not lived in Wolverhampton for 30 years but still visit family there. I dont think you can notice if you are continually living there just how scruffy and run down it has become. I am a retail design specialist and when I saw Summer Row it is obvious that this is not the solution. Existing capacity is adequate but needs a some radical thinking rather than letting it degenerate further by opening a new development. I love my home City and want it to be something to be proud of. I remember as a boy how the market used to be buzzing with traders and shoppers. Just look how depressing it looks and feels now. The same can be said of Queen Square, I look at it and think of what a wasted opportunity that was. Lets do something exciting and radical with what we have rather that shift the balance of the town away from the ‘centre’ to some low quality development.
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It does need doing very much.
And I am sure they need more than a retail specialist to desigh it for them.
think the only way foward is to clean up the city centre and start the job
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Are you RICS qualified???
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most new shopping centre,s in towns and cities attract new people who would not maybe shop there and if the experience is a good one there,s every chance they would shop there again and tell other people about their experience.Lets face it russell a lot of w,hampton people are shopping elswhere e.g b,ham, telford, merry hill, so in my opinion summer row needs to get the go ahead now, new shopping centre means better quality shops better shopping experience, win win for everybody.
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one flew.
you are correct with this comment. it will make people shop here and tell other people why go to b-ham when the develpment will be on there doorstep
I would shop here.
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Well I hope if it does not happen the shops that have been in limbo for the last 7 years with cpo on them go ahead and sue multi and the council which i have heard is on the agenda. It will then stop the council just going ahead and doing what they want all the time without any concern for anyone else.
I speak to a local shop with a cpo on it and they have said they have a no win no fee solicitor on standby to start the claim for them and a few other who have decided enough is enough.
This again will prove another waste of money with all the court cost coming out of tax money
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Arriving back in Wolverhampton by train recently – just couldn’t get the song ‘DIRTY OLD TOWN’ by The Pogues out of my head !!
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Wolverhampton town centre was commercially damaged when Dudley Street and other busy shopping streets were pedestrianised. People did not have the ability to ‘pop’ into the town and make a quick purchase with the car parked just outside a shop. They would have to park a car, trek through half of the town to make their purchase – they also would incure a high price to park their car.
Maybe the planners were influenced by cash incentives (back handers) by large shopping complex developers?
Free parking
Scrap traffic wardens
open up the restricted roads again to traffic
A few years ago Warwick visitors had 2 hours free parking. This stopped and parking meters were installed. People dont come here as much now. Shops have closed and remained empty, some have reopened, then closed due to lack of customers. This is a similar situation to W-ton
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I agree with the comments above. The town center is such a disgrace, dirty, unattractive, and unpleasant. Please spend money improving the town center first, maybe create jobs in the process. Then turn your attention to other areas. We have to make this town a place where people want to come and shop and spend time and money. I feel nothing but shame for it at the moment.
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Thgings could be worse…..
And they will be !!!!!!!
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Let it die………….like the rest of the town.
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The powers that be need to get off their backsides and start to develop the projects that are on the table. People WILL come back into the centre if there are quality retail outlets that act as a magnet. But there is a lack of initiative, political will and balls to make events happen. We have hoards of overpaid Mandarins at the Civic Centre who talk the talk but cannot walk the walk. They do not really care about the fabric of Wolvo because they do not live here; they take their salary and either hide or run. Get people in with drive and passion; Tesco, Sainsburys, Hilton Hotel, Railway Station, Molineux, Summer Row. MAKE IT HAPPEN!
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At the end of the day, this wont have that much of an affect on the city anyway. It is old, tired and dirty. Lack of investment over the last 3 years has meant is has rapidly gone down the pan. If you go into the city centre, you’re met with homeless people, drunks, yobs and litter.
It is full of boarded up shops, charity and discount shops selling tat. The transport system is a joke, busses are unreliable and filthy.
What the city needs is a proper investment strategy and a strategy to actually overhaul what is there now.
There is prime land lying disused just waiting for investment, The old Woolies is lying disused the council should cut rates or offer a proper incentive for businesses to move into these spaces and develop them.
There is also prime space to develop some world class office space and encourage businesses to move into them. But first you need to sort out the infrastructure.
Building a whole new shopping area isn’t going to work. You need to look at the wider picture and get people into the city to start with and have them there for a real purpose.
The leisure industry is on its backside as there are only really 5 decent bars in the city and one club. Wolverhampton lost its crown as a nightlife city about 5 years ago and the council should do more to work on this.
The council should employ some real local people to look at this instead of overpaid agencies who waste money. Only then will real change happen. I’d happily do it for £35K a year!
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The Summer Row scheme is unlikely ever to be viable,No serious developer has come forward with the capital necessary. Shopping patterns are changing, the internet is taking increasing shares of our spending power.
I have expressed this opinion to local councillors both Labour and Conservative.
I have asked Councillors “Would they put any of their own savings into this scheme:?” Not one offered to invest.
Call it a day ! Offer to site to one of the feuding supermarkets, Sainsbury or Tesco leaving the Raglan street site for the other.
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People in Wolverhampton should count themselves lucky to have the shops they have got – for a town of its size, it punches well above its weight.
I live in Dudley, a town with a bigger population than Wolverhampton, and look at the state of our town. We’d give our eye-teeth to have what you have got.
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boster have yow bin on the banks,s, i would check your information on wikapidia if i was you.
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What Ann(7) says is very interesting regarding the possible suing of the Council, for if that should happen, whatever costs saved by ‘downsizing’ the scheme will then go to pay compensation to the shopholders whose businesses have been under threat. A case of robbing Peter to pay Paul!
Wolverhampton Council has little idea of how the city should either look or what it needs and the only means of finding out would be to ask the shoppers and the residents of the city what THEY WANT from the city.
To my mind the priority would be to build car parking spaces sufficient to allow up to 1000 cars to park within close proximity of the shopping areas/city centre AND at a price affordable for all. Free would be even better but let’s not be too greedy!
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There is an easy and cheaper option, restore what is there. We need diversity of shops not more brand names. I work in Kuwait and, where I live, is like a UK town with Boots, Next, M&S etc, little or no Arab culture. Is this the kind of world we want? Wolverhampton needs a bit of character not become even more of a clone town. So scrap Summer Row and save some money.
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andy 14, dont you watch the news, new shopping centre,s that have opened over the last 4 or 5 years are thriving. I agree parking is an issue but the public love to shop at clean,safe and customer friendly centre,s with everthing under one roof.
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Bring jobs to the city and everything else will follow in its own sweet way…
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Provide free parking for 2 hours and people will shop and maybe spend money at the food places.
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