Potteries Centre to expand

A MULTI-MILLION pound expansion is planned for Stoke-on-Trent's biggest shopping centre within the next five years.

The Potteries Shopping Centre, in Hanley, has been the city's biggest single retail attraction for the past two decades.

But plans to build a massive new shopping and leisure complex less than a mile away have prompted the centre's owners to look at enlarging it.

The Potteries Centre, which celebrates its 21st anniversary this year, currently attracts 14 million visitors a year to 95 stores set in 52,600 sq metres of floorspace.

But owner Capital Shopping Centres Plc is now working on plans to extend the site by as much as half its current size again.

The move is a response to proposals for the new £285 million East West Precinct to the east of the city centre and more than £40 million of improvements to the streets between the two sites.

Potteries Shopping Centre general manager Paul Lancaster said it is vital that the city's main shopping attraction keeps pace with Hanley's regeneration.

He said: "We are currently working through the expansion plans with the city council, as it has got to tie in with the regeneration of the city.

"There is space to the north and west of the Potteries Centre which we have acquired and we hope to develop in the long term.

"The idea is that Stoke-on-Trent will soon be a much more desirable place to live and visit and will bring in a large population of shoppers that we do not currently attract."

City Centre Chamber of Trade chairman Richard Day said the expansion would be a major boost for the city.

He said: "Having an enlarged Potteries Centre as well as an East West Precinct will really help to increase the number and mix of retailers in the city centre.

"There will eventually be a very good mix of outlets in both centres and people will want to walk between the two."

Stoke-on-Trent City Council's portfolio holder for economic development and regeneration, councillor Adrian Knapper, said: "The plans for the Potteries Centre are important to the regeneration of the city.

"We have to transform Hanley into a regional shopping destination to bring people into the city from outside."

Shopper Olive Harrison, aged 66, from Hanford, said: "We need a bigger variety of shops selling unusual things.

"A John Lewis would be nice and I like the shopping in Trentham Gardens. Hanley needs shops like that."

Len Turner, aged 56, from Hilderstone, said: "I don't mind if they make the shopping centre larger, as long as they don't build any of these out-of- town shopping places in the countryside."

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