GROCERY and frozen food chain Farmfoods want to move their Greenock store to the town’s retail park.
Permission is being sought to use a much larger vacant unit at the Waterfront shopping complex. Currently there are planning conditions restricting what can be sold from the premises, which were last used by furniture company SCS.
The current Greenock Farmfoods is on West Blackhall Street and has a sales area of 259 square metres, with limited parking.
Farmfoods generally wants its shops to be between 929 and 1,858 square metres (10,000 to 20,000 sqft), with adjacent car parking. The Waterfront unit is 920 square metres.
A document submitted to Inverclyde planners states: “Since the West Blackhall Street store opened, Farmfoods’s operational requirements have changed significantly.
“The existing store’s size limits its ability to stock the store’s entire product range while also maintaining a good physical environment in terms of aisle width, circulation space, and goods display.
“In addition, the existing store has no dedicated customer car parking, which limits the ability for customers to do a ‘trolley shop’, with customers primarily undertaking basket and top-up shopping.”
The supporting statement continues: “The development is proposed to enable Farmfoods to relocate within the town centre to a larger unit, in order to improve its offering and better align with the retailer’s operational requirements.
“In doing so, the retail offering within the Waterfront Retail Park and the Greenock town centre will be improved, to the benefit of the vitality and viability of the town centre.”
