Derwent plots changes at White City
DERWENT Holdings and Trafford Borough Council meet tomorrow for the first time since last month’s High Court hearing over plans for the redevelopment of Lancashire County Cricket Club.
The council’s planning committee will consider an application by Derwent to alter and expand its White City Retail Park in Stretford.
Derwent wants to demolish around 15,000 sq ft of existing ground floor space, add extensions of 7,500 sq ft to existing units and build a new 9,000 sq ft non-retail unit.
The proposal is less controversial than its 2009 plan to use the site for a 100,000 sq ft Sainsbury’s. This was rejected but at the same meeting the council supported a plan for a Tesco as part of the cricket ground redevelopment. That decision led to Derwent’s judicial review in the High Court. It lost but is planning an appeal.
While Derwent’s plans for White City are small in scale the council is concerned about the repositioning of the park as a high street retail, rather than a warehouse-style, park which could damage other retail centres in Stretford.
But council officers concluded that it would “not be reasonable” to reject the application on that basis because only five units will fall below the 929 sq m definition of a warehouse unit. The report has advised officers to approve the application.
