Supermarket giant Tesco is planning to open its new Llandrindod Wells store and petrol station in the spring of 2010, the Journal can exclusively reveal.
Demolition work at the Setteºn and Durward site on Waterloo Road is well underway and is planned to continue until February, with a three week break over Christmas.
Once the demolition work is complete, Tesco will have a six month period in which to relocate the existing facilities on the Setten site, including the Territorial Army hall which will be relocated next to the petrol station, across Llanerch Lane from the police station.
Vosa will be moving to the Ddole Enterprise Park, Western Power will be relocated behind Setten and Durward and Powys County Council is currently looking into the feasibility of creating a new multi-agency youth centre for the scouts and other users at Llandrindod Wells High School site.
Once all they have all been relocated, building work on the new 30,000 sq ft store, a 296 space car park and petrol station will begin and is expected to take about nine months.
Tesco’s corporate affairs manager Felix Gummer said: “Demolition work will finish in February; there are old buildings on the site and we have had to take some time to deal with materials there.
“Following that we have a six month period to relocate the existing facilities and after that we will start building. We are looking at a nine- month build project.
“We can be fairly confident and say that the Llandrindod Wells store will be open in the spring of 2010.
“Sixteen weeks before the opening date, a senior team will be established and they will start the process of ad-vertising the jobs available and then dealing with applications.
“These time lines are subject to conditions. We are still negotiating on certain as-pects with the council and these are target dates.”
The store, which is expected to create up to 200 jobs, will also provide massive community benefits including a £700,000 contribution to create a new purpose-built scut hut and youth work unit, over £500,000 towards the new Ddole link road and £50,000 for town improvements, a new Territorial Army and Air Training Centre Unit.