John lewis

Sheffield council helped them out by buying the store off them in August for over £3.4m and in turn John Lewis commited to stay in the city paying a peppercorn rent.

Fast forward 7 months and John Lewis announce the closure of the store, walking away with 3 and a half million quid in their back pocket and no tricky retail unit to sell off. Sheffield taxpayers now own an empty shop that they've paid massively over the odds for

 

York has gone as well. Sheffield just a shadow of the shopping area it once was

 

Coles was a fantastic store. That's utterly depressing.

 

Welcome to the new normal.. or at least a small part of it

 

Maybe Barnsley could open a club shop, folk of Sheffield might want to wear the shirts of a winning team.

On a serious note that is shocking and I'm hoping there were clauses written into the 3.4 million bailout.

 

Even darn sarf places like Windsor have many empty shops. Maybe Andrew should open a souvenir shop to make some money for his mum. Or open a Pizza place

 

Not necessarily a new normal... the store was on its arse well before Covid.

If the new normal you talk about is a city centre full of boutique style shops (or empty ones), with the big ones online, then I reckon it will be the new normal....

 

What a great shame. Coles is a great shop and had my first job in sheffield there. Some brilliant people that work there. Terrible news for sheffield city centre

 

Surely they can claw that bailout back?

 

I wonder what I'm going to do with my square metre

 

Depends if they did proper scrutiny before signing the contract, or just scrawled a signature across the first sheet of A4 that John Lewis shoved under their noses. Not that anyone in their right mind would do that...

 

Sounds vaguely familiar... Hull?

 

Chansiri hasn't sold it to himself has he?

 

Coles was a great store , it’s a few years since I’ve been in it but it always seemed popular and full of customers , the new Leeds store on the other hand always seems empty , the car parks good but most people walk through JL to get to other parts of the Victoria Quarter

 

Sad to hear of its demise but not sure it will be the new normal.

A bit like the last recession, the pandemic will cull a lot of businesses that were struggling beforehand. Not saying that is a good thing, of course. It will obviously cull a lot that weren't struggling too

 

Another destination gone. No reason to go to Sheffield now. Seems like my only destination even after lockdown is couch and iPad

 

Chansiri most be in charge of the council now then, organising deals like that

 

I used to work there, real shame that and on the face of it, pretty scandalous from JL. Sheffield City centre needs everything it can get with the black hole that is Meadowhall so close by.

 

Staff in the Leeds store aren’t a patch on those in Sheffield. Coles/JL had by far the most knowledgeable staff of any department store I’ve ever been in. Leeds by contrast are clueless and spend all their time chatting with one another.

 

The closure of the Sheffield one I can understand, City centre location,lack of expected footfall, old building etc. However, I'm struggling to get my head around understanding the rationale on closing the York one, it's about 7/8 years old and in a out of town location surrounded by other retailers with plenty of car parking . Surely they could sit on that one and see if things picked up post covid restrictions?