Pub giant JD Wetherspoon has called time on speculation it will open a new Plymouth outlet in a disused Co-op supermarket.
The company, which has just said it will announce a loss for the first half of this financial year, has confirmed it is not interested in the huge unit on Plymstock Broadway.
There has been speculation linking Tim Martin’s pub chain to the building since January 2018. But Wetherspoon never actually confirmed or denied it was interested in making the space its sixth city venue.
A Wetherspoon spokesperson said the unit was “not currently of interest to Wetherspoon”, after it was re-marketed to potential occupiers.
Bristol-based property experts at Carter Jonas have begun marketing four units at Plymstock Broadway, including the former Co-op store, to prospective tenants.
The one-time supermarket has a ground floor space of 19,795sq ft, and a first floor of 11,997sq ft, and Carter Jonas said the building could be split up.
It said the unit, along with three other smaller ground floor units at the Broadway, has Class E planning consent allowing it to be used for retail, financial and professional services, cafes or restaurants, offices or medical uses.
Wetherspoon has been linked to the empty supermarket for the past four years but never actually confirmed it was interested. It never denied it either and when Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin, who founded the company in 1979, visited Plymouth in November 2017, he said it was “quite possible” to find more Plymouth sites outside the city centre.
He said expansion was driven by a combination of looking at areas where the firm has no presence and reacting to buildings that became available.
Wetherspoon already has five Plymouth outlets: The Union Rooms, Union Street; The Mannamead, Mutley Plain; The Gog and Magog, Barbican; The Britannia Inn, Milehouse; and The Stannary Court, Plympton.
But the firm has been suffering an economic downturn of late and in January 2022 warned it would make a loss for H1 of its current financial year.
The 860-pub chain has been badly affected by the Covid lockdowns, and associated trading restrictions. In the six months to January 2022 sales fell 13.3% compared with 2020, and December’s restrictions, including the imposition of home working, led to a 16.6% decrease, year-on-year.
For the 2020/21 financial year Wetherspoon made a pre-tax loss of £194.64m. It made a pre-tax loss of £105.36m in 2019/20 too, as Covid affected trade. Prior to that it had been highly profitable for years, posting a pre-tax profit of £95.42m in pre-Covid 2018/19.
The Co-op closed its store at Plymstock Broadway in 2014 with the loss of about 40 jobs. The company said the decision had been taken with “the greatest reluctance” and was due to the store’s poor trading performance.
Plymstock Broadway has since then been hit by several shop closures including the loss of household goods business Homeworkx and Wool Palette in 2017. But it gained a Costa coffee outlet in February 2017 and today has Boots, Iceland, Poundland, Superdrug, Specsavers, Card Factory and the Post Office.
