Old M&S store sold for double auction guide price

An empty shop building in Crewe town centre formerly occupied by Marks and Spencer has sold for more than double its auction guide price.

The store on Market Street went for £361,000 when the hammer came down at auction on Thursday - easing past the guide price of £125,000 to £150,00.

Graham Saunders, chair of Crewe Business Improvement District, welcomed the news, and said it could be "quite significant" for the town if the site were to be developed into retail units.

"It can only be a good thing for Crewe town centre," he said.

He added the building had been empty for a long time, and had more recently been left derelict following fire damage.

M&S moved to a new store at Grand Junction retail park in August 2017, after leaving the Market Street site.

Mr Saunders said there had been calls for major retailers to take on the unit, but this was not a realistic prospect due to the amount of refurbishment work that would be needed.

"In my mind, I always thought it was going to be a private investor, someone who was going to take the building on, refurbish it from scratch and then either try and make it into a split of retail and [residential] accommodation, or split it into smaller retail units."

He said he did not yet know who the successful bidder was.

Property consultancy Allsop declined to reveal their identity when asked by the BBC on Friday.

The listing online for the building said it may be possible for the new owner to reconfigure it to offer smaller retail units or a variety of alternative uses, provided they could obtain the necessary permission.

Smaller units, which were cheaper to run, were more likely to attract more businesses into the town centre, Mr Saunders said.

He added he was a Crewe resident, and had seen the building left to "go to ruin".

"The money they've spent on buying it, they're not going to do things by half by the sounds of it," he said of the new owner.

"It can only be encouraging really, that that is going to be positive for Crewe."

The property is about 2,500 sq m (27,400 sq ft) in size, across two main floors with a small amount of space on a third floor.

It fronts on to Queensway, Market Square and Market Street.

The Allsop listing described it as holding a "prominent corner position within the town centre," close to the Market Shopping Centre.

M&S announced last month that it had plans to move out of the town centre by mid-2027.

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