St David's Centre, Cardiff The St David's Centre (also known as St David's Shopping Centre) is one of the principal shopping centres in the city centre of Cardiff, capital of Wales.
It is currently undergoing a £675m extension to bring Cardiff within the top five shopping destinations in the United Kingdom.
In 2008-9, the annual footfall of the centre was 27 million, and is expected to rise to 33 million in 2009-10.
St. David's Centre was open to the public in January 1981, although it did not officially open until 24 March 1982. The centre has entrances on Queen Street and Working Street. It previously also had an entrance on Hill's Street, but this will eventually become an entrance to the new St. David's 2 shopping centre (below), when completed. It is also joined internally with Queens Arcade. There are 3 thoroughfares within the centre; Town Wall, Cathedral Walk and St. David's Way.
The centre attracts an average footfall of 39,000,000 per annum and has a core catchment of 2.4 million people. The 12 million tourists that visit the city annually help generate over £7.5 billion in retail spending. There are seventy-five individual shops and stores that cater for a broad demographic. The centre is anchored by Boots, Debenhams, Marks & Spencer and Bhs. It is strategically situated close to central car parking and benefits from being close to public transport services. The centre is also adjacent to St. David's Hall. When the new area of the shopping centre is finished, it is expected to be one of the busiest shopping centres in the European Union, exceeding Birmingham's Bull Ring.
St David's 2 St David's Centre, and the whole of the southern end of Cardiff city centre's shopping area, is being regenerated as part of the St David's 2 development.
St. David's 2 is a £675m extension of the centre, and has seen a large part of Cardiff's south city centre demolished, this included Oxford Arcade, St. David's Link, which included the Central Library, the NCP Tredegar Street multi-storey car park, Wales National Ice Rink, much of Bridge Street, which included the NCP Bridge Street multi-storey car park and Toys "R" Us (who relocated to Cardiff International Sports Village). The new development will consist of 3 main buildings in total; a new Central Library building, which is built on part of the Marriott Hotel car park, the John Lewis department store, which is built on the former Wales National Ice Rink, and the main shopping area, which is built on the form Oxford Arcade, St David's Link and western side of Bridge Street, also included above the shopping area are apartments, called Hayes Apartments.
St. David's 2 will add an extra 967,500 sq ft (89,880 m2) of retail space to the city centre, in addition to the 260,000 sq ft (24,000 m2) John Lewis department store, 9 other large stores, and a further 90 smaller shops in a two-tiered shopping mall will be built. It will also create 3,000 car parking spaces, new bars and restaurants plus the new 55,000 sq ft (5,100 m2) Central Library and 4,500 permanent jobs. The development will include 2 new arcades; Grand Arcade and Hayes Arcade. The whole development is scheduled to open in autumn 2009. It is anticipated that the grand opening of the John Lewis department store will be in autumn 2009. In May 2009, it was announced that completion was five months away. On the 14 May WalesOnline announced that John Lewis Cardiff, the largest outside London will be opening on the 24 September 2009.
Confirmed retailers include John Lewis, Debenhams (extension), New Look, Slater, Beaverbrooks, Fraser Hart, Goldsmith, Parkhouse the Jeweller, Claire's, Essential, Apple Store, Carphone Warehouse, O2, Vodafone, Guess, Clarks, Clinton Cards, H&M, Disney Store, Crew Clothing, Hugo Boss, Kurt Geiger, Reiss, T M Lewin, All Saints, Radley, Links of London, Crabtree & Evelyn, Ollie & Nic, Folli Follie, Urban Outfitters, JFour Jeans, and G Star Raw.
Rumoured store openings include: Hollister Co., and Hamleys Toy Store.
Confirmed restaurants include Cafe Rouge, Wagamama, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Strada and Jamie's Italian.
Confirmed cafe operators include Hey Potato, Starbucks Coffee (x2), Vive Juice Bar, BBs and Cadwalladers Ice Creams
As of May 2009 negotiations were concluded or underway on all but 23 of the approximately 140 cafes and stores in the refurbished Town Wall South and St Davids 2 extension.
The project, that it set to make Cardiff one of the top five shopping destinations in the United Kingdom, topped out on 27 January 2009.
When completed, the shopping centre alone will have a larger retail floor space than all of Swansea city centre, which has an area of 89,650m².
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