After a planning battle lasting months, Sainsbury has finally won consent to convert a warehouse club in Bristol’s Castle Court into a supermarket.
The retailer is currently trading the 3,715 sq m (40,000 sq ft) outlet as a membership club, charging customers a £5 fee to join and insisting that they live within a 20 minute drive. Under N&P the outlet’s trading area was nearer 9,290 sq m (100,000sq ft), but Sainsbury’s is using the extra space for offices and storage for white goods.
The chain has now submitted another application to Bristol City Council asking for permission to alter the frontage.
But a spokesman told EGi that a working party was still deciding what to do with the unit. The chain was forced to use the outlet as a US-style warehouse club – something it insisted it had no intention of doing when it bought the former Cargo Club from Nurdin & Peacock last spring.
The £45m deal included the Bristol site; one on the Purley Way, Croydon; and another in Wednesbury in the West Midlands. However the chain ran into problems in getting planning consent for the Bristol and Wednesbury stores. The Croydon store – which Sainsbury had always intended to sell – already had full A1 consent.
Since then, Sainsbury has played down its intention to convert the Bristol outlet into a superstore and the Wednesbury unit into a Savacentre. Instead it appears to have moth-balled the Wednesbury facility after planners hinted they would reject an A1 application. Sandwell Metropolitan District Council would rather see the land used for manufacturing or light industry to create employment.
EGi News 04/09/96
