inside business PROFILE – THE PINES
Creating a community hub
More than two years after looking at a pub that had seen better days, local retailer Stephen Carr has launched his most ambitious project yet, a 2,500 sq ft Nisa store in Denny. Kevin Scott paid him a visit to take a look.
riving through Denny you can’t miss Stephen Carr’s new Nisa store. It sits on a huge site that for decades was home to a pub called The Pines. Across a small pedestrianised square are another c- store and a beauty salon. The areas looks as if it might have once been a community hub, and by the sounds of it, Stephen’s enormous efforts are beginning to bring back those days. Stephen first looked at the site in November 2009 while he was running a KeyStore in Bonnybridge. “I was keen on it back then, but the landlord had just signed a new lease with a new pub tenant so nothing was going to happen, then the following summer he approached me.” To summarise a very lengthy process, the deal was quickly struck and Stephen submit- ted a planning application for a change of use. To say the residents of Denny were unhappy about losing their pub would be to put it mildly, but one fiery community meeting later, Stephen had quelled some of their fears with his plans to create a 2,500 sq ft conve-
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nience store with two further outlets to be sub-leased (a chemist is due to open on one of these sites in March, while Stephen is holding on to the other until the “right kind of busi- ness, something food related perhaps”, comes along). In the meantime Stephen sold his Bonnybridge KeyStore to CJ Lang in order to fund the deal, basing himself at Woodlands Store in Falkirk while work was being carried out in Denny (he has since sold the leasehold of that shop to a local businessman). There were further planning issues after Stephen opted to change the layout, before work began on the old pub’s refurbishment in September 2011. “It was a great pub in its hey day, but that had passed,” says Stephen. “We’re doing something different that the community will hopefully approve of. We’ve stripped it out, converted it, added steel supports; it’s a major change.” Such a huge job brings on its fair share of headaches, but there are benefits too. Not only is everything in the store brand spanking new, but there are opportunities to cut costs by
32 l SCOTTISH LOCAL RETAILER l FEBRUARY 2012
installing energy saving devices. State of the art chillers have cut refrigeration costs by an estimated £5,000 p.a., while The Pines uses 40 watt microlights in the main store which can lead to significant cost savings when compared to standard lights, while back of house lights are motioned sensored. “In the old shop the lights went on at 9am and stayed on 12 hours, where as here they only ever come on when someone goes through the back. I reckon they’re on for less than half the time they were,” says Stephen. When you’re open from 6am-10pm seven days a week, those saving soon add up.
THE DOORS ARE OPEN
The store opened in the second week of December and a gala opening was set to take the week after SLR’s visit, once teething prob- lems had been sorted out. These are the avoid- able delays that come with opening a new shop – the lottery, PayPoint and the ATM have yet to arrive, although all are imminent; the off-sales licence wasn’t granted until the new
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