Work gets under way on £135m extension
Fosse Park completion date is 2020
WORK is under way to demolish the old Everards brewery to make way for a £135 million extension to Fosse Park.
The brewery site is being prepared so that construction work can start on nine new stores and six more food outlets.
Big names moving on to the 12.5 acre site will include a Debenhams, TK Maxx and Clarks alongside a flagship Next store.
The shopping park already attracts 10 million visitors a year and the extension is due to be completed in 2020, at least a year later than Debenhams had anticipated back in 2016.
Michael Bell is senior asset manager for The Crown Estate which bought Fosse Park in the summer of 2014 with Chinese investor Ginkgo Tree Asset Management.
He said: “This is the beginning of a really exciting journey for Fosse.
“The development of Castle Acres will create a fantastic new retail offer for our customers and further enhance Fosse’s position as one of the UK’s best loved retail destina- tions.
“We are delighted to get started on site, and look forward to working closely with our local partners as the scheme progresses.”
The redevelopment was given the go-ahead last autumn when, after several months of delays, the shopping centre’s owners agreed a deal to buy the Everards site.
Both Next and Debenhams have had to guarantee to keep their Highcross stores open for at least five years.
The planning process for the redevelopment was led by Everards and supported by Next, which has its national HQ two miles up the road in Enderby.
Some 60 per cent of the Castle Acres site is pre-let.
Fosse Park, with 436,000 sq ft of retail space, is already one of the UK’s most successful shopping parks.
In the past year, £12.7 million has been spent upgrading stores and store fronts and on landscaping, public spaces and parking.
Five new retailers - Office, Pandora, Primark, Superdrug and JD Sports – have joined the existing line-up.
The Everards brewery had been based on Castle Acres site for three decades.
As part of a move to expand its pub estate and downsize its third party brewing operations, it shut the Castle Acres site last year and relocated its office team to a new distribution site at Optimus Point, Glenfield.
Its beer is temporarily being brewed outside the county, but revenue for the Fosse Park sale means it can go ahead with building Everards Meadows, its new HQ across Soar Valley Way from Fosse Park, next to Leicestershire Police headquarters.
That will eventually be home to a new brewery and head offices, with long term plans for pubs and bars and a food and drinks manufacturing park.
The Crown Estate oversees a £13 billion portfolio of commercial property in central London - including the entire freehold to Regent Street - as well as prime regional retail sites and offshore wind farms.
It also owns royal assets such as Windsor Great Park.
Established by an Act of Parliament as an independent commercial business, it returns 100 per cent of its annual profits to the Treasury for the benefit of the public finances - a total of £2.6 billion over the last ten years.