M&S on the front foot at Middlebrook

The retail giant is looking to expand its footprint at the Bolton shopping destination by taking space formerly occupied by Wilko and Boots.

Plans from site owner the Emerson Group for development at 54, 55 and 56 Linkway have now been validated by Bolton Council.

As set out by planning advisor Sevo for Emerson business Orbit Investments, reconfiguration would bring an additional 3,800 sq ft at Middlebrook.

M&S would amalgamate the space across the three units into a single, “brand-defining” store, said Sevo.

In an operator statement, M&S said that the store will be a full line store, meaning clothing, homewares and food will be sold there. While this is also true of the existing space – a store M&S took on from Allders in 2006 – the food section of the store is limited, amounting to only 42% of the group’s optimum foodhall size.

The store overall, said the retailer, “has become dated and too small for the surrounding catchment”.

As things stand, the gross internal areas of the ground floors of each store are around 35,600 sq ft for M&S, 16,000 sq ft at Boots, and 12,400 sq ft at Wilko – on top of which, there are mezzanines in each store.

Reconfiguring the space into a single whole would give a ground floor GIA of around 72,555 sq ft, with a mezzanine of 15,400 sq ft, representing a total floorspace of around 88,000 sq ft.

The project highlights a policy seen in other parts of the region, where despite the oft-proclaimed woes of physical high street retail, M&S is proving happy to invest in out of town locations.

The business is on board as a possible retail anchor in a wider scheme that would see it relocate from the centre of Formby to a bypass site, while in 2022 it seized the opportunity to take former Debenhams space at Parc Llandudno, moving from its traditional town centre site – upsetting some, but leading to a spike in sales figures.

While the Wilko unit at Middlebrook is vacant, Boots is still trading from its Linkway space, and is in negotiations to take alternative space at the complex.

M&S’s plan would also involve updating signage and upgrading plant at Linkway.

Emerson developed Middlebrook across the closing years of the 1990s in partnership with the local authority and Bolton Wanderers, as the football club relocated from Burnden Park. The retail & leisure complex amounts to around 650,000 sq ft with 60 retail outlets and around 12.5m visitors a year.

The plans can be viewed on Bolton Council’s planning portal with the reference 20160/25.