IT is official: A giant Morrisons supermarket will headline the town's ambitious £60 million North Place and Portland Street redevelopment.
Rumours have been circulating for months that the shopping giant was being pursued to fill a 73,000 square feet store at the car park site off St Margaret's Road.
And now the company has signed and sealed to move into the new building on a 25-year term. The major town centre redevelopment will also include a five-storey car park, 143 homes, a public square and a new bus station.
It is hoped work will start on the development early next year with an anticipated completion date of the middle of 2015.
Jeremy Williamson, managing director of the Cheltenham Development Task Force, which is leading the charge to transform the town, said: "The signing of Morrisons marks a major step forward with our ambitious plans for the centre of Cheltenham. We are delighted they have shown the confidence to make a major long-term investment in Cheltenham."
Morrisons was also granted permission in July this year to set up an M local shop in the former Blockbuster store in Winchcombe Street. The supermarket yesterday said it had every intention of still doing that, even though the site was a few hundred metres away from the North Place development.
A spokeswoman said: "Shoppers use our bigger stores for their main weekly shops but like to have the option to pop in to a small Morrisons M local to grab items they may have forgotten or simply to pick up food on the go."
The North Place/Portland Street development was granted planning permission in February and it has long been identified by Cheltenham Borough Council as a key strategic development site for improving the town. The existing car parks provide a combined 813 spaces.
The new multi-storey car park will have 634 spaces, with 300 for public use and the rest set aside for supermarket customers. It means Cheltenham will lose about 500 public car parking spaces with the under-used Grosvenor Terrace multi-storey expected to pick up the slack.
The addition of Morrisons to the town centre will mean Cheltenham will be home to eight large-scale supermarkets.
The new supermarket building will also see room set aside in the atrium, facing toward The Brewery complex, for a large restaurant while there will also be space for some other shops.
Morrisons believes the "town centre nature" of the site and Cheltenham's status as an "affluent" town provided a "perfect opportunity" for expansion.
Robin Langford, development surveyor for Morrisons, said: "Our new store at Cheltenham will be full of the latest retail ideas and will be offering our customers the full fresh range that Morrisons is renowned for."
OPINION, P8
