Ex-Boots building to house Warrington market
WARRINGTON Borough Council is planning to relocate the town’s market to the former Boots building as a key part of its £52m regeneration of the Bridge Street area.
The council bought the Bridge Street property earlier in the year and wants to use it as the new home for 200 traders, currently based behind the Boots building in Times Square.
The existing 40,000 sq ft market will be demolished, along with a number of other buildings, to make way for a new cinema, retail space and council offices on an eight acre development site.
The town’s economic development agency Warrington & Co is working with Salford-based Muse Developments on the scheme and is expected to establish a formal joint venture vehicle shortly.
Boots moved from the 25,000 sq ft building to Golden Square in 2007 and it has been empty ever since. Warrington & Co wants to keep the existing structure, which has a grade II-listed facade, and remodel it for use by the market which employs 600 people.
Warrington & Co’s managing director Steve Park said: “Having a market on Bridge Street is essential to breathing life into that area of the town. The position of the market would draw visitors to leisure sites and the cinema and other areas.”
Mr Park wants to see Bridge Street reinvigorated by the Muse project to the east of the road and other schemes to the west. A masterplan is being drawn up, with an emphasis on residential, for the Garnett’s cabinet works building and the surrounding area, and the Palmyra district around Parr Hall has already been designated as the town’s cultural quarter.
Mr Park added: “Bridge Street will bring visitors to the town and as well as residents. The town centre of Warrington has not been a place to live for many years. There has been a donut effect where we’ve developed the out of town areas.
“But there’s a changing dynamic on the High Street and we’ve got to find a new use for these areas. If people live in the town the dynamic of the night time economy will change. It will bring people in to restaurants, the market and the cinema.”
The Muse scheme is being part-funded with a council pre-let on 50,000 sq ft of office space which it will take up in 2017-18 when the lease on its existing building in Buttermarket Street ends.
Warrington Borough Council said a phased programme of site development over the next five years will create up to 400 construction jobs and 400 permanent jobs in the leisure, retail and restaurant sectors when completed in 2018.
Work on the first building is due to start in a year’s time and this will be a two-year provisional home for the market.
Council leader Terry O’Neill said: “This is a tremendously exciting moment for our town and a huge step forward in its regeneration and renaissance. Getting to this stage has been difficult and has taken time because of all of the different land and business interests involved in the project but I am very proud that we have finally reached this pivotal moment.”
He added: “The opportunity to create a new market offers a tremendously exciting proposition not only to create a world-class market facility safeguarding its long-term future but also to bring the magnificent former Boots façade back into use.”
Matt Crompton, joint managing director of Muse Developments, said: “Muse is keen to get started on the Bridge Street regeneration scheme, working closely with Warrington Borough Council, to deliver this transformational mixed-use project. We believe that it will greatly enhance this part of the town centre and bring wide-ranging benefits and growth. This announcement about the market hall proposal is an important and exciting step in the process.”
