Insider Media Limited

St James Retail Park in Northampton is to house the UK’s second Boots drive-thru service, Insider can exclusively reveal. The drive-thru pharmacy, due to open in May this year, is part of the retail park’s plans to “create and innovate”, according to owner British Land.

The 4,500 sq ft Boots drive–thru, adjacent to Bhs, is planning to offer a pharmacy drive-thru service in addition to the regular products available in store.

The dvelopment will be Nottingham-based Boots’ second pharmacy drive-thru in the UK. The first, also developed with retail park owner British Land, is located at the Tollgate Centre in Colchester.

Simon Meacock, asset manager at British Land, told Insider that the company was “keen to invest” in Northampton.

He said: “The Boots drive-thru shows that as a company, we’re keen to be creative and innovative with the St James Park development.

“We’re long term investors on the scheme, and I’ve worked on it for ten years, and seen it develop. We’re currently looking at a couple more local sites for potential development. Obviously, any deal is dependent upon location, price and the strength of local markets.”

Meacock added that he expected the commercial property market to become “a lot more active” over the next year.

“British land is definitely positive about the year ahead – we’re expecting the market to be a lot more buoyant.”

However, he said that the closure of major retail outlets such as Woolworths was not a major worry for the developer.

“From a business perspective, when a company fails and a unit becomes vacant, we have to look at it as an opportunity to introduce another client to the scheme,” he said. “For example, when Courts went into administration in 2004, we were left with a 46,000 sq ft unit in the Northampton park, but we had to turn it to our advantage, and attract new clients.”

Morgan Williams acted for British Land and Montagu Evans represented Boots on the property deal.