Sainsbury’s convenience store confirmed for former Gateway to Wales Hotel plot
Sainsbury’s is to open a convenience store on the site of the Gateway to Wales Hotel in Garden City, nearly eight years after a fire left the plot as an eyesore next to the A494.
A planning application submitted to Flintshire County Council this month names the supermarket chain as the operator of the site’s main retail unit for the first time, alongside the previously confirmed Costa drive-thru.
The application is not a fresh planning bid but a request to adjust the layout of a scheme that already has permission.
Flintshire County Council approved plans for four food and retail units on the site in October 2024, after two previous attempts to redevelop the land were refused on highways grounds.
Edinburgh-based Pequod Group Ltd has agreed to purchase the site and has applied to vary the approved plans to accommodate the specific requirements of its incoming tenants, including minor changes to the position of the units, the car park layout, and the orientation of the convenience store.
The Sainsbury’s unit will have a floor area of 376 square metres.
The Costa drive-thru will have a floor area of 168 square metres.
Two further retail units, each 130 square metres, are also included in the approved scheme, though their operators have not yet been named.
The development will include 64 parking spaces, among them 12 electric vehicle charging bays and eight mobility impaired spaces.
The site has been empty since the early hours of 19 December 2017, when fire tore through the 40-bedroom Gateway to Wales Hotel.
Sixty firefighters from stations including Flint, Mold, Buckley, Deeside and Chester tackled the blaze, which was later found to have started from an electrical fault.
The gutted building stood on Welsh Road for more than two years before the site was sold in 2020 to Manchester-based developers Valedown Developments Ltd for £732,000, after being listed at £500,000.
The hotel was subsequently demolished, but the cleared land remained unused as two planning applications for retail development were turned down, in March 2021 and again in April 2022, both on highways grounds relating to delivery vehicle access and HGV manoeuvring.
A third application, submitted in early 2024, addressed those concerns and was approved unanimously by Flintshire County Council’s planning committee in September 2024.
Christine Jones, Labour county councillor for Queensferry and Sealand, raised objections throughout the planning process over traffic on Welsh Road, describing the stretch as extremely busy given traffic coming over the flyover from Chester and from the Deeside Industrial Park direction.
The current application argues that the changes sought are minor in nature and do not alter the approved use, scale or amount of development.
Planning documents submitted on behalf of Pequod Group Ltd state that the amendments are required to accommodate service easements identified on the site since the original permission was granted.
Flintshire County Council is now inviting public comments on the application.
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