By Iain Gray
THIS is to be the new look for Bangor’s biggest shopping centre.
New owner Michael Herbert has pledged to double the size of Bloomfield’s, and recently filed plans show the first fruits of that idea.
Having already renamed the centre Lesley Bloomfield, property giant Mr Herbert is now to rework the front entrance to it.
He’s adding an extension that will house two restaurants and a shop.
It will mean the new owner has to alter the layout of the shopping centre’s car park to fit the extension in, though documents filed with the planning application state that Bloomfields won’t lose any parking spaces in the redesign.
It promises to be a big change from the centre’s current look, effectively bringing the red-brick style of units to the right of the front door across the entire entranceway as well as the new extension.
The scheme is still at a very early stage, and details were only recently published by planners. The extension likely won’t win official approval until next year at the earliest.
The Herbert Property Group were announced as the new owners of Bloomfield Shopping Centre in April this year, after buying it for £22m.
One of Mr Herbert’s first acts was to rename it after his wife Lesley – a tradition for the property giant, as seen last year with his acquisition of what is now Lesley Forestside Centre in south Belfast.
The centre and retail park already total 425,085 square feet; the coming extension will increase that by more than 9,500 sq ft.
In April, a Herbert Group spokesman said that Mr Herbert plans ‘the biggest investment in Bangor in a generation’ to double the size of the centre, creating 300 jobs in the process.
The spokesman added that the property giant wants to revitalise the shopping centre, turning it into ‘an attractive and vibrant destination, not just for Bangor but the whole North Down area’.
