Last updated at 14:20, Wednesday, 24 November 2010

There was an air of panic when Penrith’s chamber of trade met at the North Lakes Hotel in October 2008.

A model of the £80m New Squares scheme

Four speakers were lined up to address the meeting on the future of the town, but their messages were lost in the events of the day.

Bulldozers had spent the day rolling away from the Southend Road New Squares development, and suddenly hopes that Penrith’s beleaguered shopping scene was set to be revitalised collapsed into dust.

Two years on and the only difference between the site then and now is the presence of weeds.

But at the beginning of next year work on the New Squares will finally spark back into life when Sainsbury’s sends its contractors to Southend Road to build a slightly scaled back version of the scheme after planners gave the proposals the green light last week.

Eden leader Gordon Nicolson says: “There has been a vast amount of work by lots of people over a long time, and I think our starting point was always that we were doing this as we believe it is good for the town in the long run.

“It is a remarkable investment on the scale we are going to get for a small market town in this part of Cumbria, and I think that shows tremendous confidence in the town by Sainsbury’s and their investors.

“There has been a lot of negative thoughts and pessimism over the last couple of years, but I think this is now something we can be a lot more positive and optimistic about for the future.”

Mr Nicolson adds: “We can’t take anything for granted.

“Our task is to work with Sainsbury’s to ensure that the development gets underway and completed on time, and alongside that we have to engage with the business community and the residents of the area, not just in Penrith, as I see the benefits being far wider than the town boundaries.

“We have a community conference coming up on December 13, and that will take on a very positive focus. We will be able to speak to people about their concerns and ideas, and build on that.

“There is a tremendous opportunity for us and for the town to move forward on this and we have to engage more with other community groups and take people along with us.”

The continued involvement of Sainsbury’s represented a remarkable about-turn from the supermarket giant, which as recently as February appeared set to walk away from Penrith to focus on its other expansion plans in Cumbria.

The New Squares scheme ground to a halt when National Australia Bank withdrew its funding as the economic crisis closed its grip on public building projects in 2008.

In the immediate aftermath of the collapse, Sainsbury’s released a statement standing by the scheme and its existing developer, Lowther Manelli.

Hope appeared on the horizon within months, as the North West Regional Development Agency promised more than £1m to finish work on the Frenchfield football stadium, allowing Penrith Football Club to move to the edge of town and allow their Southend Road ground to be demolished as part of the scheme.

At a fraught public meeting at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School that November, developer Jim Lowther told the room that almost £18million was knocked off the value of the scheme two months before because of the credit crunch.

And he admitted he would be willing to walk away from the development if it meant getting the New Squares up and running.

In March 2009, Eden councillor John Lynch made details of a secret meeting public, telling of plans to build a larger supermarket into the scheme in return for Sainsbury’s completing the work, and the council accepted Sainsbury’s plan to finish the work, with a 78,000 sq ft store at its heart. Meanwhile, Lowther Manelli was left with no part to play in the scheme as the firm entered liquidation.

Still more twists were to come, as Eden’s leader Colin Nineham, who had been at the heart of negotiations to restart the work, quit the council to clear his name after being arrested and bailed by police investigating allegations of fraud.

Then Sainsbury’s plans, which appeared set to bring the scheme back online, collapsed as councillors rejected the plans for fear they would fall foul of European Union procurement laws.

The supermarket looked set to walk away and the future of the massive project, on which the town’s retail future was so finely balanced, appeared to be in turmoil.

But in yet another bizarre turn in the long-running saga, Sainsbury’s admitted in March this year that it would be willing to complete the scheme, with the amendments approved this week, under the terms of its step-in arrangements written into the original New Squares contract.

By then, the leadership of the council had changed once again, with Mr Nineham’s successor Keith Phillips ousted in a coup after a row over sharing services with a neighbouring authority to save money.

The scheme now is at precisely the point it was the day before funding disappeared in 2008, but those behind the scheme seem happy with the current arrangements.

Paul Miller, development surveyor at Sainsbury’s, says: “We didn’t think in 2008 that we were going to be involved as a developer.

“When we first got involved back in 2005 not for one minute did we think this would happen. We were the supermarket retailer of choice but we were just responsible for the supermarket.

“It shows the commitment of the company to the scheme that five years later and two years after the economic crisis we are still here.

“We are not just the developer but the retailer, it’s in our interests to deliver the scheme.”

The winding road which has led from the scheme’s collapse to its rebirth in recent months, and months to come, meant that joy was not the overbearing emotion for those who have laboured to see it put back on track.

Immediately after last Thursday’s planning meeting, when nine our of 10 councillors voted to give Sainsbury’s the go-ahead to build the New Squares, council chief executive Kevin Douglas summed up his feelings on the subject.

“I’m delighted, and I’m relieved,” he said. “Seeing things going back onsite will be a great outcome for us. It has been two years of really hard work to get to this point.”

Throughout the protracted process of restarting work, the town has struggled, and was temporarily left with no major supermarket when Penrith’s Morrisons store burned down last December.

Now, with Morrisons reopened and work having begun on the Brunswick Road branch of Booths, shopping in Penrith looks set to get back up and running.

Some people are upset by the amendments, particularly the reduction in the number of parking spaces available in the scheme since Sainsbury’s took one storey from its car park.

But now work appears set to begin again in January, with part of the scheme potentially ready in time for next Christmas, finally the end appears to be looming into view for a saga that left a proud town with only half its heart.

First published at 11:38, Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk