New Riverside centre to boost Shrewsbury tourism

A new £150 million shopping centre in Shrewsbury could help bring hundreds of millions of extra tourism revenue to the town, developers today said.

The go-ahead for the creation of the New Riverside was given by Shropshire Council last week, with construction work on the new shopping complex expected to get under way next summer.

And bosses behind the scheme have now said they believe the ambitious project will help put Shrewsbury on the map and bring more people and money to the town.

It follows a report to Shropshire Council last year by Britton McGrath Associates, which said Shrewsbury was lagging behind the likes of Chester and Durham in terms of visitor numbers.

It said the town currently had 2.6 million visitors a year, compared to Chester's 41.9 million tourists and Durham's 17.5 million. The report, published in September, suggested investment could massively boost the £137m spent by tourists in Shrewsbury each year.

"It would appear not unreasonable to suggest that, given our knowledge and confidence in the quality of the visitor experience that Shrewsbury has to offer, with the appropriate investment, it might be possible to increase income from the visitor economy significantly, perhaps even in the order of an incremental 50 to 100 per cent of current performance," it said.

"If the tourism spend in Shrewsbury increased to, in the order of £275 million per year, it would still place it well below 50 per cent of the tourism spend achieved by Durham or Cardiff and still only 15 per cent of that achieved by Chester and Cheshire West."

David Rodger, of Ignis Asset Management, one of the firms involved with the centre with owners UK Commercial Property Trust and builders Shearer Property Group, said he was delighted by the approval.

By Chris Burn