Department store giant John Lewis is in talks with Birmingham city council to open its largest store outside London.
The council is in discussions with the country’s most highly sought-after retailer to anchor its £600m redevelopment of New Street Station.
Sources close to the talks suggested that the John Lewis Partnership could take as much as 300,000 sq ft at the 14-acre development and that a site above the existing station, with entrances at the new southern gateway to New Street Station on Bristol Street, was being considered.
The store would form part of the redevelopment of the 1960s-built Pallasades shopping centre. Birmingham council bought the 290,000 sq ft mall, which forms a key part of the New Street project, from Warner Estate for £91m in early 2009.
“New Street is a fantastic location,” said one source. “It has priority footfall and is right in Birmingham’s retail core. It’s a no-brainer for John Lewis to go there.”
JLP has been eyeing Birmingham as a location for a department store for many years and had been frontrunner to anchor the Birmingham Alliance’s now-stalled 2.9m sq ft Martineau Galleries mixed-use development.
More recently, it has considered the former wholesale markets site adjacent to the 1.2m sq ft Bullring mall.
The proposed store at New Street Station would form part of Birmingham’s ambitious Big City Plan – the council’s blueprint for the regeneration of 2,000 acres of city centre land. The second stage of the project is to be unveiled in September.
Work on the redevelopment of New Street Station began this year. Completion is scheduled for 2015.
JLP’s largest existing department store outside the capital is its 280,000 sq ft store at Land Securities’ and Capital Shopping Centres’ St David’s Centre in Cardiff, which opened in October last year.
The retailer also already has a 265,000 sq ft store in the West Midlands, at Touchwood Court in Solihull. However, JLP managing director Andy Street last month said that the chain was keen to open in Birmingham city centre.
He said: “It’s no secret that we’ve been looking for a site for many years, and if the right opportunity came up we’d be very keen to take it. We believe Birmingham is the regional capital and we want to be represented in the regional capitals.”
A spokesman for Birmingham city council said: “It would be inappropriate to comment on speculation as to the involvement of any specific companies with potential investments in Birmingham.”
DTZ is retail letting agent for New Street Station.
lisa.pilkington@estatesgazette.com
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