Castle Vale Shopping Centre (also known as Castle Vale Retail Park) is a retail park located on the Castle Vale estate in Birmingham, England. It is situated off the A452 Chester Road and was originally built in the 1970s.
A retail park or power center is an unenclosed shopping center with a typical range of 250,000 square feet (23,000 m2) to 600,000 square feet (56,000 m2) of gross leasable area that usually contains three or more big box retailers and various smaller retailers with a common parking area shared among the retailers. It is likely to have more money spent on features and architecture than a traditional big box shopping center.
Castle Vale is a housing estate located between Erdington, Minworth and Castle Bromwich. Currently Castle Vale votes with Tyburn Ward which is part of Erdington constituency, 6 miles (9 km) northeast of Birmingham city centre in England. The area has an approximate population of 10,000 people and has a distinctly modern residential character stemming from its history as a postwar overspill estate.
Birmingham is the second-most populous city in the United Kingdom, after London, and the most populous city in the English Midlands. With an estimated population of 1,137,100 as of 2017, Birmingham is the cultural, social, financial and commercial centre of the Midlands. It is the main centre of the West Midlands conurbation, which is the third most populated urban area in the United Kingdom, with a population in 2011 of 2,440,986. The wider Birmingham metropolitan area is the second largest in the United Kingdom with a population of over 3.7 million. Birmingham is frequently referred to as the United Kingdom's "second city".
The original centre was built in 1970 to serve the new housing estate that was being developed at this time. [1] It was initially very popular thanks to its wide range of shops and modern, functional design. But it was one of the most hard-hit parts of the estate during the decline that began towards the end of the 1970s. Shoplifting and vandalism became rife, traders moved out.[ citation needed ] By 1994, 30% of the units in the centre were vacant. [1]
Castle Vale Shopping Centre was completely rebuilt as a modern retail park during the early 2000s, at a cost of £35million. The first store to open in the new development was Sainsbury's, opened in 2000. Other major stores opened on the site are Argos, Comet (The Comet unit has been let out to B&M), T.K. Maxx, Smyths, SCS, William Hill and a Lloyds Pharmacy as well as a number of smaller units including a post office. [1]
Sainsbury's is the second largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom, with a 16.9% share of the supermarket sector. Founded in 1869, by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane, London, the company became the largest retailer of groceries in 1922, was an early adopter of self-service retailing in the United Kingdom, and had its heyday during the 1980s. In 1995, Tesco overtook Sainsbury's to become the market leader, and Asda became the second largest in 2003, demoting Sainsbury's to third place for most of the subsequent period until January 2014, when Sainsbury's regained second place.
Argos Ltd, trading as Argos, is a British catalogue retailer operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and a subsidiary of Sainsbury's. The company trades both through physical shops and online, with over 845 retail shops, 29 million yearly shop customers, and nearly a billion online visitors per annum, making it one of the largest high street retailers in the United Kingdom. It has also franchised overseas to countries such as China.
Comet Group Limited, traded as Comet, is a defunct electrical retail chain trading in the United Kingdom, latterly owned by OpCapita. The company sold consumer electronics and white goods, along with related products and services, and pioneered the concept of the out-of-town discount warehouse in the United Kingdom. Before its collapse, it was the UK's second biggest electrical retailer, with 6,000 staff and over 200 stores.
In 2007 the retail park was sold by its owners British Land to PRUPIM for £90million. [2]
The British Land Company plc is one of the largest property development and investment companies in the United Kingdom. The firm became a real estate investment trust when REITs were introduced in the UK in January 2007. It is headquartered in London. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and a founding member of the European Public Real Estate Association.
