Argos moving out of Wulfrun Centre

Argos has been one of the oldest surviving shops in the Wulfrun Centre and its departure will leave another glaring hole in the city centre, which has a string of empty shop premises including the former BHS store in the neighbouring Mander Centre.

It has fallen victim to Sainsbury's new scheme to close Argos outlets and re-open them as store-within-a-stores in its bigger supermarkets.

Sainsbury's has been accelerating the programme since its £1.4 billion takeover of Argos owner Home Retail Group last year.

The supermarket giant has confirmed "the store in the Wulfrun Centre will relocate into Sainsbury’s in October," transferring across to the 72,000 sq ft 24-hour superstore at Ring Road St Mark's.

But there has been no word on the impact on the Argos workforce.

And the Express & Star understands that Sainsbury's had not informed Wulfrun Centre landlord London & Cambridge Properties (LCP) of its decision.

The stores giant will face having to keep paying rent on its Wulfrun Centre premises until its lease expires. It is still paying around £1.2m a year rent for its former supermarket site at St George's Parade in the city centre, where the lease has another eight years to run.

The Argos store has been a feature of the Wulfrun Centre for more than three decades. It was dramatically increased in size in 1993, becoming one of a new series of Argos superstores, following a £1m facelift that saw the existing catalogue shop take over the former Pizza Ritzy restaurant and a discount clothes stores next door, tripling its size and increasing the workforce to more than 60.

The move in the city centre leaves a big question mark over the Argos store at Bentley Bridge, in Wednesfield, which has a major Sainsbury's store just a few hundred yards away.

After Sainsbury's announced it would look to shut a number of the 734 stores in the Argos chain and bring them into its supermarkets as concessions, retail experts suggested up to 200 Argos stores nationwide could be affected.

Sainsbury's Chief Executive Mike Coupe has said around half of Argos's stores in the county had shop leases with less than five years to run, which offered the opportunity to shut a number of them and move them into Sainsbury's.

Supermarket chain bosses backed the 'strategically compelling transaction' to buy the catalogue chain because they believe it would allow them to realistically compete with rivals such as Amazon, with more than 100,000 general merchandise products between Argos and Sainsbury's.