Sovereign looks for retail opportunities

DEVELOPER Sovereign Land revealed it hopes to make further investments in Yorkshire after taking over the building of Trinity Walk shopping centre in Wakefield.

Director Chris Geaves said he was looking at existing shopping centres. He said: "We have one or two in mind which we could make better by reconfiguring the space".

Work restarted on the half-built Trinity Walk centre last week, after the project was put on hold when developer Trinity Walk Wakefield, owned by Modus and CIREF, was refused further finance by Anglo Irish Bank and went into administration.

The 500,000 sq ft development was saved by a consortium of Shepherd Construction, AREA Property Partners and Sovereign Land, which bought it from administrators KPMG in December.

The group is investing 120m to finish the job on top of the 100m already spent.

Shepherd Construction has 200 workers on site to make sure that the centre is open by spring 2011. The first job is to complete the 6,200-tonne steel frame.

Trinity Walk will employ hundreds in 40 units once it is finished. Retailers signed up include Debenhams, Sainsbury's, Next, New Look, H&M, Peacocks, River Island, and Carphone Warehouse.

Mr Geaves said demand was encouraging and Sovereign Land was in talks with about 12 more retailers. He added: "There may be one or two shops which are vacant but it's good to have a few temporary lettings in case a new name comes in and we need to move people about."