Pride Hill shops to be stripped as work to transform Shrewsbury gets underway

Work to prepare the Pride Hill centre for future development will start on Monday. A cinema has been mooted as a potential option for the top floor of the site but nothing has been confirmed.

Shropshire Council has also announced that the centre is its preferred destination for a new HQ to replace Shirehall.

Several retailers from Pride Hill have now relocated to the Darwin Centre.

Contractors will initially focus on stripping out shop fronts and installing hoardings in and around the centre. This will allow essential works to begin while allowing any remaining stores to reopen or relocate after the lockdown.

The work is being part-funded by a £5 million grant from the Marches Local Enterprise Partnership.

The public toilets in the Pride Hill centre will now be out of use but customers are able to use the new toilets in the Darwin Shopping Centre.

Direct access via the escalators to and from the Pride Hill Centre and Riverside Centre will be closed.

Traders

The most direct pedestrian route from Riverside to Pride Hill and the Darwin Centre will be Roushill Bank. Access from Raven Meadows multi-storey car park to the Darwin Centre remains unchanged.

The Pride Hill centre is set to close as part of the plans to redevelop it and to make the Darwin Centre Shrewsbury’s main shopping centre.

The enabling works in the Pride Hill centre follow the major refurbishment of the middle level of the Darwin Centre in 2020, which included brand new toilets, a Changing Places facility and a family room. The Collective – a specially created shopping gallery for many independent traders from the Pride Hill Centre – opened in the Darwin Centre last December.

Steve Charmley, Shropshire Council’s cabinet member for assets, economic growth and regeneration, said: “We have always been clear on our intention to repurpose the Pride Hill Centre to create a vibrant and sustainable town of the future. We want to create a quality destination for Shrewsbury’s residents and visitors that is like no other town in the UK. This is a really exciting stage for us to embark on and vital to the town’s transformation. We’re ahead of so many towns in having a genuine vision and plan for the future.”

Mandy Thorn MBE, chair of the Marches LEP, said: “This is a transformative and innovative scheme which will create jobs, bring new investment into the town centre and help develop a new long-term vision for the heart of Shrewsbury. We are delighted to see that progress on such an important project is getting under way.”