Sainsbury’s has expressed its disappointment at Tesco mounting a rival bid to create a town centre superstore in Glenrothes.
Paul Miller, Sainsbury’s national development surveyor for Scotland, said the Tesco challenge would delay the long-awaited development and jeopardise the original plans.
Mr Miller said Sainsbury’s had been within 10 days of concluding the missive on the Kingdom Centre site when the counter bid was announced, and work had been expected to start on site this year. However, the chain has insisted that despite the latest development, it is still committed to Glenrothes.
Both companies are aiming to create the anchor store of the Kingdom Centre, which will be expanded to accommodate it. The situation follows three years of protracted negotiations between Sainsbury’s and centre owners AXA, after planning permission was granted for a supermarket on the North Street site in December, 2007.
“Tesco were involved in this five or six years ago but couldn’t come to an agreement with AXA,” Mr Miller said. “AXA then came to us to ask us to look at it and three years ago we agreed terms. A planning application was put in for the store as well as for non-food retail units.”
The CISWO club and YMCA in North Street were to be moved as part of the development and while talks continued on that side of things, the recession hit and plans for the non-food units were sidelined.
“We had to go back to the drawing board at AXA’s insistence and we’ve now gone for a slightly bigger site,” Mr Miller said. “Technically, it’s quite a difficult scheme to deliver because we have Glenrothes House to take down, and there’s a lot of services like gas, electricity and water underneath the car park and new car parking has to be created.
“We’ve got to the stage now where we have just about solved all these problems. We were literally 10 days away from concluding the missive when our competitors put a pre-application notice in without telling anybody.
“Rather than say ‘we are so far down the line with Sainsbury’s,’ AXA have not concluded our agreement and have asked Tesco to bid and asked us to make a re-bid. That will do nothing but delay it. It won’t speed up the food store that everybody wants.”
Mr Miller added, however, “We are still here and we still want to open a Sainsbury’s supermarket in Glenrothes.”
Tesco have also said they are committed to opening a Glenrothes store, with corporate affairs manager Gloria Coats stating, “We believe Tesco is the right fit for Glenrothes and we are committed to offering local residents the value for money and excellent choice that they deserve.”
Sainsbury’s and Tesco are both holding public exhibitions on their plans for the Kingdom Centre this week. Tesco’s will be on display in the town’s Rothes Halls from 11am to 4pm on Wednesday and from noon to 7pm on Thursday.
Sainsbury’s public consultation, also in Rothes Halls, will run from 10am to 6pm on Friday and from 10am to 3pm on Saturday.