Small firms making way for Summer Row

Small businesses in Wolverhampton are making plans to break away from a rundown part of the city centre to make way for the Summer Row shopping development - even though it still faces a legal battle to be built.

Family-run JT Jarvis & Son will move after 53 years trading as an electrical contractors in Cleveland Street. Wolverhampton Volunteer Centre and Sevenoaks Sound & Vision are another two organisations planning to move for a £300 million showpiece centre anchored by Debenhams.

The Express & Star last week told how London and Cambridge Properties, Wulfrun Centre leaseholders, launched a legal challenge over centre plans - threatening to delay it.

More than 200 firms will relocate or move out if the High Court decides a city council compulsory purchase order is acceptable.

At JT Jarvis & Son, father Jim Jarvis, now aged 86, said: "We have been here for 53 years and have now got 20 electricians. We are looking at moving to Graiseley Row but we've got to make it pay for the business because the rent and rates are what makes it hard for us."

The firm say the current Cleveland Street lease is secure until 2012, but under the compulsory purchase order a cancellation would be negotiated in order to enable the move, although the timescale is uncertain.

At Sevenoaks Sound & Vision, Cleveland Street, owner Steve Cooksey, 51, said: "I've been here five-and-a-half years and I'm in a difficult situation because I did think the last rent bill I paid would be my last.

"We're just trying to shift our stock now but there's no profit margins in it anymore - we need to move but we really don't know where to go. I looked at an empty unit in Tettenhall but there was no way we could afford the kind of money it would have required to run. We're not happy. We did think we'd be gone in April."

At the volunteer centre manager Rita Beddard, 64, said they spent thousands on a revamp in 2000 and it was a huge shame they had to go. "We are negotiating a lease in Snow Hill but I've said all along that where we are now is ideal."