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Big names set for city mall

11:57am Tuesday 11th March 2008

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A £200 million new shopping centre for Newport has clinched five new big-name chains.

River Island, Boots, and JJB sports are coming to the new Friars Walk centre, as will Pizza Express and Nandos, creating over 100 new jobs in the process.

Newport Council Leader, Bob Bright, praised the announcement: "This is more great news for Friars Walk, Modus and Newport City Council and is clear evidence that the development is well on the way to fulfilling our ambition to transform the city into a modern and vibrant retail destination."

Cllr Bright was particularly welcoming of Nandos and Pizza Express: "It is particularly pleasing to see the signing of Nandos and Pizza Express, two high quality restaurant chains which will enhance the family dining experience in the centre of Newport."

They join Debenhams, Marks and Spencer and New Look at the shopping centre and 58 per cent of the 450,00 square foot floor space has now been contracted out.

Nigel Poad, Leasing Director for developers Modus said: "These deals demonstrate that despite the general doom and gloom that the media are promoting, retailers are still willing to commit to quality schemed.

"Securing Pizza Express and Nandos as the first operators to commit to the restaurant quarter sets the tone we are seeking to achieve, There is currently no family dining on offer in the City and we are determined to address this."

Building work on the £200 million development is imminent and is set to be completed in 2010.

John Burrows, Chief Executive of the city's regeneration body Newport Unlimited, said: "We are delighted the scheme is continuing to get very strong interest and lettings and look forward to the project getting on site in the next couple of months."

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Owain Vaughan, Newport Monmouthshire says...
12:03pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Other names in the pipeline are River Island, Next, Starbucks, Las Iguanas and Vue Cinemas.

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Owain Vaughan, Newport Monmouthshire says...
12:07pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Oh and Republic too, with nine others in discussion...

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Sospan fach, Newport says...
12:17pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Are New Look, Boots and Marks & Spencer pulling out of Commercial Street? I hope it doesn't turn into a street of boarded up shops and pound shops.

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King of the Hill, Newport says...
12:25pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Sospan fach wrote:
Are New Look, Boots and Marks & Spencer pulling out of Commercial Street? I hope it doesn't turn into a street of boarded up shops and pound shops.
Unfortunately that is usually the case. It happened in my home town of Brighton and looks to be happening in Cardiff.

Personally I'm praying for zavvi (Virgin Megastores) to come to Newport. The HMV in town is a complete rip off and has stopped selling vinyl.

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tim, Magor says...
12:26pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Sospan fach wrote:
Are New Look, Boots and Marks & Spencer pulling out of Commercial Street? I hope it doesn't turn into a street of boarded up shops and pound shops.
Regarding M&S yes,and I expect the rest will move.

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tim, Magor says...
12:28pm Tue 11 Mar 08

King of the Hill wrote:
Sospan fach wrote: Are New Look, Boots and Marks & Spencer pulling out of Commercial Street? I hope it doesn't turn into a street of boarded up shops and pound shops.
Unfortunately that is usually the case. It happened in my home town of Brighton and looks to be happening in Cardiff. Personally I'm praying for zavvi (Virgin Megastores) to come to Newport. The HMV in town is a complete rip off and has stopped selling vinyl.
Zavvi is a good store but with the net and supermarkets I wonder how long they will be around for.

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ted, newport says...
12:40pm Tue 11 Mar 08

River Island, Boots, and JJB sports are in Commercial St which looks as though it will become a run down area with shops moving to the new development.

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Owain Vaughan, Newport Monmouthshire says...
2:15pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Yes because of course, once a shop has moved, no-one else could possibly fill its place?

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ted, newport says...
2:58pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Owain Vaughan wrote:
Yes because of course, once a shop has moved, no-one else could possibly fill its place?
It appears not, if you walk through Newport there's plenty of evidence!

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geoffrw, newport says...
3:01pm Tue 11 Mar 08

This is all good news for Newport but we need to remember two things.

Firstly where are all the people going to park? Sadly Newport is not exactly car friendly is it?

We appear that we have done a deal with a traffic light manufacturer somewhere along the way. Either that or the things are breeding. It seems that we can’t go more than a hundred yards without coming upon a set of these often pointless eyesores.

I have always wondered how green these things really are. A.) How much do they cost to run? B) What effect does stopping and starting all these vehicles have on the greenhouse emissions?

To move on to my second point. Having all the big name shops in the town centre is all very well. Councillor Bright can be very pleased with himself for making Newport look like every other town centre in the U.K.

It’s a great pity he couldn’t have put the same amount of energy into finding a way to encourage some of the “small businesses” in the area to move into Newport’s new town centre.

We may have the Market but there has to be room for the slightly larger local businesses and shopkeepers who are currently forced by financial constraints to operate from the suburbs. These people would inject a degree of colour and personality into what looks like turning into a clone of every other UK town centre.

Then lastly the greatest eyesore in the town centre. Why can’t Councillor Bright focus his “Talents” on regenerating Newport’s famous Westgate Hotel? This noble building with it famous Chartist History is a disgrace.

It’s high time that Newport focused its attention on this now decaying treasure which is crying out to be a museum of some kind to remind people of the part NEWPORT played in this world famous piece of UK history.

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newporttillidie83, newport says...
3:07pm Tue 11 Mar 08

We will just have to wait and see,it would be good if the Council etc came forward and told us what was happening when these stores move but will they ? No.
I can only see this happening,all those empty stores being turned into Pubs+Clubs
The Council need to get the balance correct.
Also would love to see in Newport some top fashion stores for men.

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Owain Vaughan, Newport Monmouthshire says...
3:38pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Geoffrw - repeat after me: "city".

We may have the Market but there has to be room for the slightly larger local businesses and shopkeepers

Well, surely you've already figured it out? When the existing retailers move to bigger stores in the new mall you have a ready-made supply of bigger stores for them to use.

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Marky, Newport says...
4:02pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Reading has nice high streets and a market and also a shopping mall with very similar to Friars Walk.

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al newport, newport says...
4:03pm Tue 11 Mar 08

well done geoffrw perhaps we get rid of traffic lights dont be so stupid they are there for a reason lets get rid of them and have everybody crashing.the lights by the castle are a godsend traffic is a lot better there now theres no worrys about pulling out onto the roundabout.

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daisy, wales says...
4:37pm Tue 11 Mar 08

we need a good musum and other things of that nature. when i take the youngr members of my family out for the day it would be nice to take them shopping but to mix it up with history and culture i tried taking my 6 year old neice to the libary and they asked us to leave because the littlen had a cough - i mean for god sake! it would ne nice to take them out for the day shopping, buy them lunch but inject a bit of education and culture into the day - mix it up a bot so its not so boring for younsters!

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Dave on his soapbox, Casnewydd, Gwent says...
4:42pm Tue 11 Mar 08

....isn't putting traffic lights in place of roundabouts a national government policy....and don't local authorities get grants to implement this.... it's supposed to slow traffic flow and ease congestion?????

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geoffrw, newport says...
5:40pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Our traffic lights are special their diverting lots of Newport people to the Cwmbran shopping center.

Can't understand why Cwmbran can make do without lights on every roundabout. Is Cwmbran a much more dangerouse place to drive around than Newport then?

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Owain Vaughan, Newport Monmouthshire says...
6:14pm Tue 11 Mar 08

No - Cwmbran is a small town that doesn't have the same level of traffic as Newport so doesn't need as many traffic lights or bus lanes. Perhaps in a parallel universe we could have two Newports - one with traffic lights and one without so we could compare them in a controlled experimental way. In the absence of that, why not trust the traffic engineers? After all it's their job, not yours...

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Mike, Newport says...
6:37pm Tue 11 Mar 08

I can't help but think that some of the comments on this page are not recognising the fact that there a few car parks in the process of being built! So parking will get a lot easier - it's a work in progress! And why oh why does anybody bring this Cwmbran thing up again. It's a small town with smaller scale shops and smaller problems. And for anyone who has ever lived there, such as I, it is a nightmare with all the round abouts which cause mayhem as many times drivers seem to have no clue about what lane they should use. As for the commercial street issue - I can see that being a problem but hopefully there will be room to develop these old stores into smaller units and maybe we'll get a good mix of quirky and diverse shops which will be sustained by the increased footfall the new Malls will create - don't forget the City Spires development will mean people wil be moving twix the too and through Commecial street etc.

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King of the Hill, Newport says...
6:52pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Jesus, is every piece of good news concerning Newport always met with such negativity?

You don't see people in Cardiff moaning about the shops closing down the main shopping strip do you?

I just hope they can regenerate people's moping faces too!

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Mike, Newport says...
7:02pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Well said King of the Hill - ultimately it's great news for the ongoing development of the Port!

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Dave on his soapbox, Casnewydd, Gwent says...
7:07pm Tue 11 Mar 08

....just to put some figures to the arguements.... Newport has as an unitary area a total of 139,600 in an area of 190m2...where as Torfaen has 90,300 in an area of 126m2....which by my calculation... 0.00136 people/m2 in Newport Unitary authority and 0.00139 in Torfaen... so not a lot of difference...

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tim, Magor says...
8:06pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Newport has become so much hassle to drive round, never mind park, I go to Cwmbran and Cardiff.

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LESLEY, newport says...
8:28pm Tue 11 Mar 08

Hey Geoffrw, not sure if its true, but i did hear that the westgate is going to be revamped and used as its name suggests,Hotel. Yipee

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john77, newport says...
10:16am Wed 12 Mar 08

some of these comments seem to a little strange, King of Hill wants to shop for vinyl records at Zavvi, when on Charles Street we have one of the best record stores in the UK - Diverse. Then someone else wants men's fashion shops - have you not been to Chessmen, Henry Cordy, the Wardrobe. All top end, independent shops in our city centre. Sometimes you don't realise what you've got.

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DG, Newport says...
12:50pm Wed 12 Mar 08

daisy wrote:
we need a good musum and other things of that nature. when i take the youngr members of my family out for the day it would be nice to take them shopping but to mix it up with history and culture i tried taking my 6 year old neice to the libary and they asked us to leave because the littlen had a cough - i mean for god sake! it would ne nice to take them out for the day shopping, buy them lunch but inject a bit of education and culture into the day - mix it up a bot so its not so boring for younsters!
I'm sorry, I can't believe that's true. I've taken my son to the Newport Central Library and Museum a couple of times a month for the last 9 nine years and never had a problem.

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cardinit, cardiff says...
1:34pm Wed 12 Mar 08

Going back to the new development, there is also a section for independent retailers with flexible leases etc but a lot of these shops won't be 'signed' or units filled until way closer to the opening date. 2 years is a long time in retail and a lot of smaller, independent shops don't work that far in advance..watch this space I guess.

Also, going back to Cardiff, the city has plenty of great shops on the main street that have actually chosen to be on the High street such as Zara, River Island as the orginal facades are amazing- there is room for both shopping centres and high street but just takes time....

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geoffrw, newport says...
11:23am Thu 13 Mar 08

My sympathy with Al. If you can’t negotiate a roundabout without traffic lights do you think you are fit to be driving?

Most roundabouts don’t actually have traffic lights, even the busy ones like the one at the top of bridge Street (thank goodness).


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