Location: Preston

Value: £23,000,000

Size: 50,000 sq./ft extension

Client: Benson Elliott

Sector: Leisure, Retail

Project Team: Trevor Colman, Steve Hetherington

The proposed development reconfigures and extends the Fishergate Shopping Centre in Preston on a site located within the city's Principle Retail Core and directly adjacent the Preston railway station.

It comprises the reconfiguration of existing retail space in the shopping centre, extending the existing popular Primark store to bring significant areas of vacant retail space back into use, and creating a new mall giving direct access from Fishergate to the large surface car park at the rear of the scheme. New and remodelled retail units are provided for new incoming tenants. There will also be a new nine screen cinema and a restaurant hub comprising five new restaurants and a smaller food kiosk. The rear elevation, facing the car park, is completely remodelled to incorporate a new entrance to the Centre and to prominently display new, large, retail units.

The whole of the rear of the Centre has been designed to encourage pedestrian flow to and from the Winckley Square quarter. The ground floor restaurants are arranged for easy access from Winckley Square with a new attractive pedestrian realm incorporating customer seating as well as high quality hard and soft landscaping. In turn, this will easily link to the new mall via the new entrance and on to Fishergate, providing a new, convenient shopping and leisure circuit to enhance the City’s offer.

In providing this improved link to the car park and by reconfiguring the existing shops at that level, this development aims to bring all existing vacant and under-used retail space back into use by attracting new, incoming, national retailers.

The first element of the scheme, the reconfiguration and extension of the Primark store, was granted Planning Consent in 2017.