One of the two remaining stores in a rundown Bristol shopping centre is to close, Bristol Live understands.
Staff say they have been told the Iceland store in St Catherine's Place shopping centre in Bedminster will close in February. However, Iceland Foods has refused to confirm or deny the store will close or give any information about what will happen to the staff.
The Iceland store car park is accessed by road on Dalby Avenue, which has been closed northbound for a year, giving drivers a diversion of exactly a mile around Bedminster to reach the store from the south side of the city.
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But the store's location has long been declining, with only Farm Foods left trading in the St Catherine's Place shopping centre, which is earmarked for a major redevelopment as part of the Bedminster Green regeneration project.
Local development company Firmstone has already converted the former DSS office block at the end of the shopping centre on Dalby Avenue into 54 apartments. In March 2021, Firmstone was awarded planning permission by Bristol City Council to redevelop and refurbish the shopping centre and build a total of 180 flats in new buildings there.
Work on the refurbishment and on the new flats is yet to get underway, although work has begun on the plot next door - at Little Paradise - and across the road from Iceland's car park, where 819 student accommodation rooms are being built.
Bristol City Council closed the A38 Dalby Avenue and Malago Road northbound a year ago, in January 2022, to enable the Bedminster Green regeneration work, realign the road and install a District Heat Network. At the time they announced the work would take two and a half years, with the road closed city-bound for all of that time.
Drivers heading from the south or east now have to travel a mile out of the way, around Asda and back down Bedminster Parade, to reach the Iceland car park and the St Catherine's Place shopping centre.
Bristol Live approached Iceland for more details on the store's future, and the supermarket chain refused to comment.
Read more on Bedminster Green:
Two and a half years of road disruption begins for Bedminster Green project
Plot 2 - High rise flats with no affordable homes give permission
Plot 3 - What 837 student flats will look like when seen from all over BS3
Plot 4 - Little Paradise plan for high-rise housing first to win permission
Plot 5 - Businesses being evicted ahead of big Bedminster Green development
South Bristol's GPs and schools won't cope with 12,000 new homes claims MP
Excavation reveals history of Bristol's most secret industrial site
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