The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
A major furniture sales company is moving in to a town centre shop that’s been vacant for four years, bringing good news to Spalding.
After months of closures hitting the high street, a new company has confirmed it will be moving in and opening in early March.
The Furniture Warehouse will be operating from the prominent site and creating four or five jobs when it opens its doors to the public.
It is the latest former Beales department store that the company is occupying after it opened branches in Peterborough and Wisbech – both in former Beales’ sites.
But sales director Alex Raspin said it wasn’t necessarily a prerequisite that it was old Beales stores, but the size of the shop floor made them ideal for displaying furniture.
Beales, formerly Westgate, closed 12 of its shops in February 2020 and the Spalding site has been divided with The Original Factory Shop taking some of the floorspace. The rest has remained unused.
South Holland District Council leader Nick Worth said the move was good news.
“I am absolutely delighted that we have a new furniture business moving into the old Beales department store,” he said. “It goes to show that with a bit of patience Spalding can still attract retailers to the town, it has a lot going for it and this will definitely help with footfall. The £20m investment from the Government, will I hope attract more businesses into the town in the future. This is a great start.”
The Wisbech store opened a month ago and Peterborough on January 5.
The company also has a store in Corby which opened in August 2022 and another in Market Deeping which opened in July last year.
Mr Raspin said there was at least one more in the pipeline.
Over recent months Spalding town centre has been hit by shop closures as national brands have disappeared.
The last big names to leave were Hughes and Carpetright who have both gone in the last couple of weeks.
