Ceredigion Council have released details of Aberystwyth's planned Mill Street development, incoporating a multi-storey car park, a large Tescos supermarket and three other shops. The Council's press release reads as follows:
"Ceredigion County Council is pleased to confirm the appointment of Chelverton Deeley Freed as the Council’s preferred developer to deliver a strategic development of Mill Street Car Park Aberystwyth.
"This appointment results from an extensive UE compliant competitive dialogue process that has been ongoing for the last 18 months, culminating in three bidders submitting final tender proposals within the deadline of 18th July 2011.
"The three proposals were evaluated against four substantive areas of assessment:
• Planning content and design
• Economic Benefit
• Deliverability
• Financial proposal.
"Chelverton Deeley Freed’s proposal scored the highest against the agreed evaluation matrix, resulting in the Council’s decision to award the contract to this party.
"The development of Mill Street Car Park has been a key strategic aim of the Authority for some time. This is on the basis that increased car parking provision in Aberystwyth would support the needs of the town and some form of commercial development fronting Park Avenue would strengthen the town’s offer and support its vitality and viability.
"The Chelverton Deeley Freed proposal includes an anchor Tesco store comprising some 25,000 sq ft of net food sales space and 12,000 sq ft of non food net sales area. Three additional retail units are proposed fronting Park Avenue, with the proposed Tesco store located behind these units. The 3 retail units have a total ground floor area of 14,500 sq ft with the potential to double this floor space with a first floor mezzanine level. The scheme will also include 7 residential units and 500 car parking spaces – almost doubling the existing parking provision.
"The proposed public car parking spaces comprise 134 spaces over three levels which will be transferred to the Council to run as appropriate and 366 spaces will be operated by the Tesco store as a short stay car park providing 3 hours free car parking for shoppers visiting both the Tesco store and the town centre. The availability of this number of free car parking spaces in such close proximity to the town centre will be of significant benefit to retailers in the centre.
"In addition to the benefits of free car parking, the proposal will generate well in excess of 200 FTE jobs within 12 months of the scheme being created. The close proximity of Mill Street car Park to the town centre will result in significant linked trips between the proposed development and the town centre - estimated at between £1.6 and £3.5m net additional turnover per annum for the core town centre.
"The support for this proposal from Aberystwyth Chamber of Commerce demonstrates the positive benefits for traders in the core town centre that will result from this proposal.
"Ceredigion County Council is very pleased to confirm that the commercial element of the scheme will be developed to the highest possible BREEAM Excellent standard [note, BREEAM is the envivonmental sustainability building standard] and the development will incorporate a minimum 10% of recycled material in the construction phase. The Council will be working with the developer to deliver additional community benefits in terms of recruitment and training long term economically inactive persons as part of the construction workforce whilst also creating training and apprenticeship opportunities."
"It is anticipated that the development will be complete by mid 2014 and the developer will be invited to provide further information via stakeholder engagement events in advance of the statutory planning process."