Construction of the Bicester town centre development is now nearing completion, ready for opening this summer.
When completed, the redevelopment will include a new Sainsbury’s foodstore, a seven screen Vue cinema, a new shopping street, multi-storey car park with over 500 parking spaces and a new bus interchange area on Manorsfield Road.
With the structure of the new buildings now nearly completed, activity has moved inside and teams are hard at work to lay flooring, construct internal partitions and fit heating, cooling, lighting and electrical systems.
Following the completion of the development’s steel skeleton last July, it has taken seven months to create the new multi-storey car park and clad the shell of the development in a mix of brickwork, stonework and glazing.
The spiral car park access ramps have been constructed and the surface of the new 500 space multi-storey town centre car park, above the Sainsbury’s supermarket and Vue cinema, has been laid. The car park includes both spaces for disabled shoppers and for parents visiting the town centre with children.
To help drivers find a parking space, the car park will include real-time information screens advising users of the total number of available spaces on each of the two parking levels. The lower level will also include a lighting system above each space which will indicate the location of unoccupied parking spaces.
Pedestrians will be able to access the new store, shopping area and cinema from the car park by using travelators, lifts and stairwells located around the redevelopment.
Paul Tyler, Sainsbury’s Project Manager, said:
“We are now entering a really exciting phase of the redevelopment project and hopefully local people and visitors to the town centre can see how much work has been put in by our team since we started.
“Recruitment at the new Sainsbury’s foodstore has now started and around 300 full and part-time positions are being advertised on
www.sainsburys.jobs and more information is also available in the new Sainsbury’s recruitment centre in Crown Walk.
“When it is completed in the summer, shoppers, visitors and residents will benefit from a range of new retail and leisure opportunities that will make Bicester town centre a more attractive place to come and visit.”