Newport's former Debenhams building is set to become a mass vaccination centre this winter. The shop has lay empty in the city's Friars Walk shopping centre since May 2021 after the brand closed all its UK stores when it was sold to online retailer Boohoo for £55million.
Large queues formed outside the shop on its final day of trading last year as Debenhams shut, six years after it opened as the flagship store in the £90 million Friars Walk in late 2015. Its loss was labelled "dreadful news" by Newport Business Improvement District (BID) and Newport was later named the UK city with the most closed shops in January 2022. You can read more about that here.
Despite calls for the building to be re-let it has remained empty since along with other Debenhams in Cardiff, Swansea and Carmarthen, though in August it was revealed the latter would be turned into a state-of-the-art gym. In May this year it emerged that the 90,000sq ft Newport site was being considered for a planned technology-focused learning campus for thousands of students. But it has been announced this week that the store will be temporarily used as a mass vaccination centre for autumn booster Covid jabs, the first time it has been used since Debenhams closed.
