Discount retailer SPAR has been handed planning permission to open a new store in a former car showroom on Manchester Road in Walkden.
It’s due to open 7am until 10pm, 7 days a week.
The lot, at the corner of the busy A6 and Whittle Street, has been vacant since the previous car sales, servicing and repair firm closed in 2005.
The indoor showroom, 600 metres east of Walkden Town Centre, will be refitted as a 3,010sq ft convenience store with ATM.
SPAR said in support of its application that the new store could employ up to 30 people.
This would be 15 full-time and 15 part-time jobs.
It added that it would only employ people from the local area.
“There will be no designated staff parking spaces as the employees will be recruited from the local area and will walk, cycle or travel by bus to, and from, the site.”
When building work is complete, jobs are expected to be advertised on the SPAR website.
The applicants are Preston-headquartered grocery firm James Hall & Co, a wholesaler and distributor for 540 SPAR stores in the north of England.
They won permission from Salford City Council planners on 21 November last year, but have now pushed through design changes to the part single-storey, part two-storey build.
Larger plans to expand the 0.1ha site were turned down in 2009.
As part of the plans James Hall & Co needed to demonstrate why they could not occupy one of the vacant buildings in Walkden town centre.
They cited the reduced size of the new SPAR as compared to the giant 15,235sq ft Tesco and the new 1,570sq ft Aldi at the Ellesmere Centre.
Planners argued a new store would improve the visual look of the area’s dilapidated and vacant buildings: “Without the investment the proposal represents, the site can be expected to continue to be a real and prominent blot within the local landscape and, indeed, to become worse.”
Parking concerns – with the store backing onto a busy main road – were alleviated by the provision of 11 car parking spaces in front.
Deliveries are due to be made to Whittle Street as part of the plans.
No date for the start of the build has been given.
Main image: A similar-sized SPAR store in Bradford (when complete)
