Wolverhampton car park changes for new Sainsbury's

A city centre car park off Wolverhampton's Ring Road will be remodelled and its entrance moved to allow a new Sainsbury's supermarket to be built, it emerged today.

A new pedestrian crossing will also be created at Ring Road St Mark's to the new store at Raglan Street, under the multi-million pound plans announced by the supermarket giant.

Sainsbury's wants to transform the rundown site, which has been dubbed one of the city's biggest eyesores, with a new 90,000sq ft store, petrol station and homes in a move to create 450 jobs.

And it has revealed for the first time that its current city centre store at St George's Parade, which opened in 1988, would be closed to make way for the superstore in Graiseley.

Sainsbury's spokesman Richard Harris said: "The entrance to the car park would have to move so that the pedestrian crossing would not lead directly into the vehicular access to the car park.

"The car park will then have to be rejigged because of the changes and the spaces will be remarked.

"A pedestrian crossing would be installed over the Ring Road to create a safe access to the supermarket."

Bosses said that the new store will include a raised customer restaurant, a recycling centre and an online shopping centre. A travellator will be installed connecting the 810-space und- erground car park to the shop floor.

The creation of the store will end more than a decade of wrangles between Sainsbury's and Tesco, which owns a 10 per cent share of the land.

The two rivals have now agreed for the sale of the land as long as Tesco secures planning permission for a separate multi-million pound scheme to transform the Royal Hospital site into a supermarket.