Former St Annes Booths Store to Become Tesco Express

Posted on 18th May 2011

Commercial property consultants Robert Pinkus & Co. can confirm that the former E H Booth & Co. foodstore, a landmark building fronting St Annes Square, has been sold on behalf of Booths to St Annes-based property company, Whitesides Property.


Acting on behalf of the new owners, Robert Pinkus & Co. have negotiated the letting of the ground floor, basement and part first floor to Tesco Stores Limited, who have taken the 8,326 sq ft store from Whiteside Properties. The property will trade as a “Tesco Express” which is a convenience store and will increase choice in the area for shoppers.


The property occupies a prominent position in the heart of St Annes’s Square where nearby retailers include B&M Bargains, WH Smiths, JR Taylor Department Store and Edinburgh Woollen Mill.  Booths previously traded from the property for nearly 90 years before their new 30,000 sq ft store on Haven Road, Lytham opened in 2007.


Tesco Stores Limited will begin work on the site shortly to transform the property into a Tesco Express which they expect to be open to the public later this year. The new store is also expected to create around 20 full and part time jobs for the area. The upper floors of the building will remain in the occupation of Lou-Shang Cantonese Restaurant.


The exterior of the property features an attractive mural, commissioned by E H Booth & Co. Ltd. in the 1960’s by the late local artist Claude Harrison, a Lancastrian artist most famous for his portrayal of harlequins, clowns and masked figures often depicted against bleak, landscaped backdrops.


The mural on the property in St Annes’s Square is believed to be a visual representation of the origins of the delicatessen products sold by Booths such as the cheeses, teas and speciality coffees sourced both locally and from exotic corners of the world.


Born 1922, he studied at The Harris College Preston and Liverpool School of Art, and exhibited at the Royal Academy and The Royal Society of Portrait Painters regularly since the early 1950s. Claude lived a large proportion of his life with his family in the Lake District, until he developed Parkinsons Disease in his early eighties when he was forced to give up painting and moved to the South of France. He died in 2009 aged 87.


 

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