The Bradley Stoke Journal

The footprint of the new Tesco store in Bradley Stoke has become more visible in the last few days, with erection of the final pillars on the south side of the building. The outline of the store can now be seen to stretch from the site boundary on Bradley Stoke Way to within a few metres of the new filling station on the access road leading from the Three Brooks roundabout.

Construction is expected to continue towards the north-west corner of the store in the next few days.

The full extent of the building is however not yet apparent, as the mall units on the northern side are yet to be added - this phase of the work has been held back pending demolition of the existing Tesco store’s loading bay, which the new store overlaps. The mall units, when added, will bring the boundary of the new store to within a few metres of the existing store (to the north) and the existing filling station (to the north-west).

Tesco plans to keep the existing store running until the new store is ready to open in “late autumn”.

The new Tesco store at Bradley Stoke’s town centre development is currently scheduled to open in “late autumn” according to a contact at Tesco’s public relations consultants. This is somewhat later than the date of October 2008 currently being advertised in the existing Tesco store, but is still on target for a pre-Christmas opening.

Our new Town Centre Countdown panel in the sidebar of this website shows the number of days remaining until the opening. Check out our new Timeline page, which will keep track of the projected opening dates.

The new Tesco store alone has a retail floorspace nearly two and a half times that of the existing store. Attached to the new store will be a set of 18 “mall unit shops” over two floors. Elsewhere in the complex there will be five “town centre units” together with five “non-food retail retail units”.

The detailed site plan can be viewed on the South Gloucestershire Council website (warning: large file!).

The new Tesco filling station currently being constructed within Bradley Stoke’s new town centre development could open as early as April according to staff working at the existing filling station. Work on the new facility started in January with erection of the blue forecourt canopy supports.

The first of the two giant fuel storage tanks arrived on site on 30th January and was lowered into position within an excavation east of the new forecourt.

Installation of the pump feed pipework and pump bases followed in early February, after which the forecourt concrete was laid. There is still a fair amount of work to do on the kiosk and access roads are yet to be started. Once the new filling station is open, the old facility will be demolished to make way for the new town square and freestanding non-food retail units to the north-west of the new Tesco store.

Search for filling station photos in The Journal’s PicasaWeb gallery.

South Gloucestershire Council (SGC) this week announced an inflation-busting 4.49 per cent increase in council tax for 2008/2009. The rise looks like being the highest amongst the authorities in the former Avon area, with B&NES and N.E. Somerset already agreed on 3.95 per cent and 1.9 per cent respectively and Bristol looking set to agree on 4 per cent. The SGC press release justifies the increase with a list of “significant investments and improvements to many council services”, but the news is unlikely to receive a warm welcome from pensioners (for whom council tax forms a more significant proportion of expenditure than people of working age) and public sector employees (limited to wage increases of just 2% by central government).

The government’s favoured Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure of inflation is running at 2.2 per cent, whilst the Retail Price Index (RPI) is 4.1 per cent or 3.1 per cent excluding mortgage/rent costs (RPIX).

It is believed that Bradley Stoke Town Council has agreed its precept for 2008/2009, but no information could be found today on the Council’s website. Minutes of the Full Council Meeting on 16th January 2008 have yet to appear on the website, despite the advertised policy of making them available four working days after a meeting.

The existing Tesco store in Bradley Stoke is coming under increasing pressure from construction activity associated with the new town centre development. Traffic signals on the access road to the store have been causing tailbacks for traffic entering and leaving the store, with one resident reporting a delay of half an hour on leaving the store last week. The traffic signals were removed last weekend (16/17 Feb) but promptly reappeared on Monday.

The traffic problems are in addition to the operational problems caused by the demolition of the existing store’s loading bay and annexation of part of the car park by the construction team. A large marquee has been erected alongside the store as a goods inwards area and the store’s fleet of home shopping delivery vans are now operating from temporary garaging in an arcade at the front of the store.

An advertising van from competitors Asda Wal-Mart has been noticed from time to time cheekily parked on the access road to the store.

Demolition of the loading bay of the existing Tesco store is nearing completion. The photo (left) shows that only part of the steel framework remains. Work on the demolition began in early February with the removal of a large piece of machinery from the roof of the building using a giant crane. The initial attempt had to be aborted due to high winds, but the task was completed a few days later [photo]. Scaffolding was then erected to dismantle the brickwork before work on the steelwork could begin. More photos in our PicasaWeb Gallery.

The site plan extract above shows that the loading bay of the old Tesco store (shown as a dashed red line) overlaps the footprint of mall units forming part of the new Tesco store. The remainder of the space occupied by the old store will form car parking for the new scheme. Also visible in the plan is an access road into the new town centre development from Bradley Stoke Way. It is believed that this road will be reserved for buses, allowing them to pull up in front of the new store before proceeding to the new bus station elsewhere on the site.

Meanwhile, one lane of Bradley Stoke has been coned off alongside the new store. This is believed to be in connection with work to re-route buried cabling. This is being carried out by Avonline on behalf of Virgin Media and it is understood that the lane closure will last at least a week. Oddly, no mention of these roadworks could be found on the Road Report page of South Gloucestershire Council’s website.

We have been very busy researching stories and will be very shortly making a number of back-dated posts about the new town centre development. In the meantime, why not check-out our PicasaWeb Gallery which has now grown to 241 photos!