A brand new retail park at St George’s Way in Newport has been given the green light by Council officials, paving the way for the creation of up to 200 jobs.
Outline planning permission for the new out-of-town complex has been granted at tonight’s planning committee meeting at County Hall.
The development, which will sit on the site of the current Newport Football Club ground, is expected to see Aldi and Wickes arriving in Newport alongside a new McDonalds drive-thru and a number of other retail units. However, plans for a 24 hour gym have been scrapped.
There will be parking for nearly 300 cars with access off Godric Road, opposite Asda.
Tonight’s decision kick-starts work to relocate Newport FC to a new state-of-the-art sports facility off Racecourse at Whippingham, to be known as WightFibre Park.
It is hoped that construction of the new retail park will begin next year.
Paul Airey, South Coast Leisure’s planning consultant, previously said:
“This will bring a different retail offering to Newport giving customers a greater choice and more reasons to travel to Newport. It will also help to maintain retail spend on the Island by increasing consumer choice.
Article continues below this advertisement “This is a site that has been ready for development for many years and we are delighted to be finally bringing forward a plan that will not only give customers a new retail offering but will also create a significant number of jobs for local people.
“It will also end years of uncertainty for Newport Football Club by providing them with a brand-new facility that will also provide a sporting and social amenity for the wider community.”
Councillor Julie Jones-Evans dramatically resigned from the Council’s planning committee after declaring tonight’s meeting ‘distressing’. Cllr Jones-Evans has a shop in the heart of Newport.
Its amazing, while we are being told that we must cut down on car travel as part of green future, we are supposed to jump up and down with excitement over this incredibly boring, same as all the others, retail opportunity. It’s out of date as a concept already, before the first blade of grass is disturbed.
Shame that this has been approved. Apparently Wickes are mooted as a potential tenant. Wickes are actually up for sale by there owners, I think it is strange that they’re planning expansion.
Just goes to prove the planning members just listen to the developers, with out any knowledge of what this will really mean to the Island as whole. Thinking of people S C L employs, no real surprise.
Primark ?
Jeez do we really need another supermarket and a junk food outlet on the island .
another nail in the coffin for the high st
Only!!!! 4% on top of all the other thing’s the town is struggling with, Head in the sand councillor’s.
No new Health Centre I suppose ?
I agree a medical centre with plenty of parking and on a bus route would have been ideal especially as Brading and Lake will have no Surgery from the end of March 2020. It’s all about money and back handers.
How behind is this !!
I know job’s are needed here but Newport has been going down hill for a long time and are lovely Market town looks dejected all the small shops have gone what the hell is happening to our Island all we will be is a concrete jungle with and how are we going to cope with infrastructure it has to be a joke
The council need to look at the cross solent connectivity problems before doing anything else…. the ferries are at full capacity now, so what’s going to happen when thousands more homes are built?? like it or not, there needs to be another way on/off… whether it’s a fixed link or airport! solentfreedomtunnel.co.uk
Can’t they just get some new shops to the island and not just the same one’s we already have do we really need another McDonald’s and Aldi. There must be other shops that people would normally go across the water for.
We are so overcrowded as it is ? Can our roads take it ?
No
Another roll over by the planning committee, so just 5 people from the council passed this.
Congratulations Julie. Few more with guts like you needed around this Island. 🙂
This future soulless retail park is a farce in every way. You have retail businesses folding and leaving empty units already in Newport, fill them before you look to build further on a green area. Why another discount store! Aldi really? why not a Home Sense or a small M & S Home, Zara clothes/Home, Next Home, John Lewis/ Waitrose. If you really must have a branded food outlet (I don’t use them, too many fantastic places to eat on the Isle of Wight), why not something different like Wasabi, Chipotle, Pho look outside the box, go and approach other outlets to see if they fancy a punt. While I’m at it, want to say I think it is a disgrace that the council would not let Mole expand a truly useful outlet in a rural area, and yet they will let this debacle go ahead just up the road…. unreal.
Madness. Utter madness.
Why do we need yet another retail park? Just another nail in the coffin of the high street. To say that it is going to create extra jobs is utter twoddle because these will just be offset by job losses in the high street and other supermarkets.
Wow!!! 2OO jobs, no mention of how many jobs will be lost in the now fading town. Wake up!!!!!
WTF is going on, how many shops do we need.
I suppose people who are home all day say “ let’s bump up our carbon footprint and go for a jolly up ride and look round a shop, after all we just bought this 40k BMW let’s use it F**K the planet”
Wait for the retail park at Whippingham in the future ….Newport FC moved from Church Litten to make way for shops …now they are doing it again..
Its housing this Island needs not shops.
Yep well apparently the only thing that can go on this ground is shops according to what the lease says, so we the public don’t have a say? Never do we have a say and for as far back as I can remember, the high street has always been dead. Used to be you’d go out of one door of Gateways where HMV used to be and straight into another Supermarket to get their deals. Then all of a sudden we had Safeway move to where Morrissons is now. Somerfield was Big Gateways and the old HMV one was small Gateways. We also had Internationals, who were here then bought out by others. For those who are saying we need more houses, for God sake what we need to control as a species is population. The Isle of Wight is over populated as it is, no matter what the yearly survey says, let alone the rest of Britain. Building Houses is not the answer, as so many young couples can’t even get on the property ladder to afford their own home. South Street in Newport is a eye sore, with those rows of shops and that monstrosity they call a building to house all those shops. Plus the crossings along there, how many do you need? What’s wrong with crossing from Mcdonalds? Why all the other crossings, that hold up the traffic along there? My point to this long and boring article is this, there is so much more to be done here on the Island and I for one am fed up of moaning about things that are out of my control.