An artist's impression of the new Telford development
Town centre bosses have taken the wraps off multi-million pound plans which will completely transform a key gateway into Telford – including a new £30million supermarket, homes and restaurants.
Plans have been unveiled by developers Hark Apollo for a unique timber-clad food store on the existing Red Oak car park – possibly for supermarket giant Asda.
The “iconic” building will also have space for other developments such as cafes and restaurants.
It will have an underground car park and attractive tree-lined walkways will lead from the new development to Telford Shopping Centre.
The current Asda store, located next to the proposed development, will be demolished to create an attractive new square containing offices, retail and possibly homes, developers said.
Hark director Rob Cossey said it was an exciting opportunity for the town.
He said: “We believe our scheme and the additional £30 million investment behind it merits support.
“It complies with national planning policy and current local policy.
“We hope to resume discussions with Asda in due course and wish to be ready to offer them a new consented store.
“That is the reason for this application – a new state-of-the-art supermarket knitted closely into the existing town centre supporting the other traders and their employees, and there are some 2,750 of them working there.”
Images were released of the ambitious plans at a meeting of councillors and business bosses at Vox Bar in the town centre last night. International architects Benoy, the team behind the transformation of Birmingham’s Bull Ring, are behind the exciting new design.
A planning application is expected to be submitted before the end of the year.
Since buying the town centre in 2007, Hark has created a new restaurant quarter and food hub in the town centre.
By Wayne Beese
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9 Comments
Now that looks amazing! Fa better than the horrible retail park style development Asda have proposed for themselves.
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The trouble is, grey, the final monstrosity often looks nothing like the “cute” artists impression which is supposed to woo the public. You only have to look at the darwin monument in shrewsbury to get an example and the sixties “artists impressions” of telford looked far better than the monster that ensued!
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That is unfortunately true. Still, the other Asda proposal has a rubbish artists impression as well so this one still wins.
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It should be stopped right now. It will attract insects at night and birds will fly into it in the day breaking the poor little beaks so they starve to death!!!!!
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How many more years and artists impressions do we have to see before they build the bloomin Round. How long has it been now?
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Almost exactly 2 years. Since it was unveiled they have built the Primark extension whih was apparently the first phase of the Round. A new supermarket which was going to be or Asda was to be the second phase.
I think they do intend to do a lot with the centre, after all they spent almost half a billion pounds buying it.
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What I want to know is will this underground parking be free?
I was doing my Xmas shopping in Poundland today and the parking was terrible. I had to park at Sainsburys and walk over to Halfords (making a decoy entrance and exit into Currys to fool the security into thinking that I was technically a customer so I could use that park) , over the Bridge, past the Court, in at M&S and right through the malls to save paying car parking fees.
Something needs doing about this.
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I can’t see it happening. Show me another town of a similar size with free parking in its centre.
Its a nice little money spinner for the shopping centre and with the barriers and machines they don’t even have to pay staff to enforce it. They must rake it in.
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This isn’t a great design ..Cheap timber cladding is never going to age well.
Forget about underground parking.Burying a section of the ring road so that people could walk at street level from one area of the town to another would be a step in the right direction for a town designed for pedestrians and not just cars.
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