Exclusive: Sale ‘pending’ for Morecambe’s Arndale Centre up for grabs for £5m

We exclusively revealed in August that the Arndale shopping centre in Morecambe which celebrated its 50th year of trading this year, was under offer from a mystery buyer.

Now Loopnet which markets commercial properties, upgraded from Realla who originally had the Arndale Centre property details on their website, have updated the property facts for the centre, saying ‘sale pending.’

The centre owned by NewRiver REIT was put on the market in April by marketing agents at the time Realla, who said ‘it is an investment opportunity with a catchment area of over 197,000 people.’

The centre first opened its doors to customers at 10am on Thursday May 25 1972.

The new shopping centre was described at the time as offering a ‘spacious and attractive layout ...traffic-free shopping malls ... warm in winter and cool in summer ... friendly atmosphere and guaranteed protection against all kinds of weather ... wide selection of merchandise ... all under one roof ... even the man of your house will derive pleasure from what he may previously have thought to be a somewhat painful experience’.

The centre currently has six storeys and is on a 15 acre site.

It currently houses Iceland, Boots, Poundland and others.

Home Bargains left the centre on Christmas Eve 2021, while the Tesco store closed in 2015.

Shoe Zone, which has around 380 stores across the UK, will shut its shop in the Arndale early next year.

Poundland which had a store at the bottom of the Arndale Centre near Iceland, has recently moved into the former Home Bargains store further up and had its grand opening last month.

It is not known who will be moving into Poundland’s smaller unit which they left for a bigger unit.

London-based NewRiver REIT took ownership of Morecambe’s Arndale Shopping Centre in a deal worth £14m in 2014.

The sale does not include the Travelodge, which NewRiver REIT sold to a private investor in 2019.

Owners NewRiver REIT declined to comment on the pending sale.