Regent Arcade in Cheltenham has confirmed its plans to build a rooftop bar and restaurant at its town centre premises.
The shopping and leisure centre became home to the new TIVOLI Cinema in September 2021, with JD Sports and Decathlon stores set to open this year too.
And now centre manager, Scott Lahive, has revealed it will go ahead with even more ambitious plans in the new year.
‘We applied for and won planning permission for a rooftop bar and restaurant. That is our next project.
‘We have marketed that space and we have had interest and we are now need to look at designing something, depending on who the occupier is,’ he said.
Documents for the scheme refer to ‘a high quality, fine dining restaurant’ and it is understood the Regent Arcade’s new boutique TIVOLI Cinema and its associated footfall helped convince ‘interested parties’ of the potential of the rooftop scheme.
‘We have come out of the pandemic stronger. We have new stores that will help us to position ourselves well and help futureproof us,’ added Lahive.
The idea of a two-storey rooftop restaurant at Regent Arcade was first revealed in 2017, when the centre – which is owned by Canada Life Asset Management – announced it had hired Surrey architects Bell Associates to submit outline plans to Cheltenham Borough Council.
Those plans described replacing the existing conservatory on the Regent Arcade roof with ‘a two-storey lightweight building to accommodate a rooftop bar/restaurant’ with ‘external terraces allowing views across the rooftops of Cheltenham’.
Planning permission was granted in February 2017, with Regent Arcade aiming to draw up more details plans in the new year and hoping to get work underway in 2022.
By Andrew Merrell
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