Speaking ahead of the auction Mr Wright said there had been “so many people interested” in the building, with “varying ideas”.<\/p>\n
“Some want to keep it as retail; some want to keep the ground floor as retail with mixed use upstairs; and there was a discussion about a hotel,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It is a lot of space in a great spot in the city centre, but whoever buys it will need to have enough money to redevelop it as it is going to cost a substantial amount of money to get it back into a useable state.<\/p>\n
“It is a fantastic opportunity, but it is a complicated asset with various stakeholders, including lease and freeholders, and you would need to get their approval to redevelop it.”<\/p>\n
More than 90 Debenhams stores were permanently closed in May 2021<\/a> after the company went into administration, leaving empty buildings in Sheffield, Meadowhall and Doncaster.<\/p>\n In 2023, Doncaster Council approved plans to convert the former Debenhams in the Frenchgate Centre into a six-screen cinema.<\/p>\n Debenhams at Meadowhall was taken over by Sports Direct<\/a> in September 2024.<\/p>\n Retailer Boohoo bought the Debenhams name and website and now trades solely online.<\/p>\n Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds<\/a>, catch up with the latest episode of Look North<\/a> or tell us a story you think we should be covering here, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking ahead of the auction Mr Wright said there had been “so many people interested” in the building,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8817],"tags":[748,393,4884,1620,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-424562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sheffield","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-sheffield","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115204616670953584","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}