Comment: No surprises and no little help as Tesco pulls out
Of course we weren't surprised, writes political editor Daniel Wainwright.
But that makes it no less devastating that Tesco has scrapped its plans to build a supermarket at Wolverhampton's derelict Royal Hospital.
While people in market towns all over Britain would protest at the arrival of one of the ubiquitous supermarket's stores, in Wolverhampton there were politicians and community leaders begging it to set up shop.
The city has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.
Admittedly, 600 jobs in one shop wouldn't solve all its woes, but as Tesco itself would say, 'every little helps'.
Because around that store further development would have followed, bringing more money, more jobs and growth.
Attention must now turn to Plan B, whatever that might be.
Wolverhampton City Council and Tesco have to discuss what can be done with the site of a once prestigious hospital that was left to fall into decay.
It is certainly not the fate deserved for a hospital that tended to the wounded heroes of the Normandy landings in 1944.
Tesco has been doing conservation work on it so it has to be more saleable than it was. That is the only silver lining in this sorry, long-running saga whose conclusion was sadly inevitable.
It has been dragging on for 14 years.
The once-mighty, all-powerful, Tesco threw its money around and wooed Wolverhampton City Council by promising to redevelop the hospital in exchange for building on land Sainsbury's no longer wanted.
Then Sainsbury's changed its mind and the pair battled it out in court for years like spoiled children arguing over a toy.
By the time it was all settled, the world was a different place, the economy in the doldrums and the discounting supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl on the rise.
Tesco has a moral obligation to Wolverhampton to make good on its promise. It has left this city with a derelict eyesore for a decade and a half.
And while it might have come to the conclusion that the city didn't need another supermarket, it didn't need another empty building either.
People were willing to welcome Tesco to Wolverhampton with open arms but none of that mattered to a company that was only ever concerned about its profits, rather than the community it would have served.
When stock gets damaged it can just be stuck on a shelf and sold off cheaply.
Broken promises are not so easy to shift.
