DFS, Oak Furniture Land, Sofology and Tapi are coming to Rugby.
The stores are the first retailers signed up to open at the ‘phase two’ development of Elliott’s Field Shopping Park.
The new shops are scheduled to open before Christmas. They will occupy four of the nine units on the former Tribune Trading Estate site, with the remaining five to be announced soon.
Thomas Cochrane, Development Manager at site owners Hammerson, said: “These popular and successful brands will enable Rugby residents to make some of their big purchases for the home without travelling so far.
“We know that people who live in Rugby currently make most of their homeware purchases outside the borough. At Elliott’s Field, we are helping drive growth in Rugby by addressing this gap in the market and responding to customer demand for greater choice.
“We are seeing significant interest in the remaining units at Elliott’s Field, and this is a reflection of the strength of the first phase and the growth of Rugby as an area.”
The £20 million expansion of the shopping park will create around 120 new jobs, and will also include a new café/restaurant and around 500 new parking spaces.
The park will be carbon-neutral, with energy used by the occupiers offset by sustainable initiatives.
Two new access roads will also be built at the often gridlocked site – one opposite Junction One Retail Park, and one halfway between that and the Tesco roundabout.
The park currently only has one access road – which regularly clogged up during the Christmas shopping season, prompting Rugbeians to describe the car park as a ‘nightmare’ with some shoppers reporting delays of up to one hour when trying to leave.
The plans for the new extension (left, in pink) as it will sit alongside the existing retail park (right, yellow).
But town centre traders fear the expansion will kill off in-town retail, where nearly one in ten units are vacant.
Aftab Gaffar of town centre management company Rugby First said: “The town centre has just passed a fragile period and any further out of town development could mean further losses of shops and investment.”
