End of the Wheatsheaf: demolition plans would replace Rochdale's empty shopping centre with 443 homes

The Wheatsheaf Shopping Centre - shut since the pandemic and increasingly an emblem of the high street Rochdale used to have - could finally be coming down.

The centre's Dubai-based owner, DHA Corporates, is working with Muse Architects on proposals to demolish the 168,000 sq ft complex and replace it with around 443 new homes: three apartment buildings and a row of townhouses, on current working figures roughly 134 one-bed apartments, 201 two-beds, 86 three-beds and 22 townhouses. The scheme would also include ten ground-floor commercial units, a community hub building and a significant new area of public space, designed to reconnect Yorkshire Street with the amenities at Rochdale Riverside to the south. An outline planning application is expected before the end of the year.

It would draw a line under three decades of mixed fortunes. The Wheatsheaf opened in 1990, originally linked to the former bus station and the "black box" council offices that stood where Rochdale Riverside now sits. In its heyday it was a bustling complex of five floors, home to some 15 big-name stores and independent retailers, with names like Wilko, Argos, New Look and Peacocks trading there over the years - plus the town's library on its upper floors before the move to Number One Riverside.

The decline was long and visible. Wilko pulled out in 2018 when its lease expired. The centre closed with the rest of the country in the March 2020 lockdown, briefly reopened, closed again that November - and then its then owner, MCR Property Group, announced it would not reopen at all, blaming the shift to online shopping and a retail environment that had become unsustainable. It has stood vacant ever since. DHA Corporates bought the building in 2022 for around £3m, and last year won permission to convert part of it into a wedding and banqueting venue - a scheme that is no longer going ahead in favour of the residential plan.

Readers have asked about a reported deal with Primark said to have collapsed when the retailer was refused permission to trade until 8pm. Rochdale Daily has been unable to find any record of such a deal or any published account of Primark negotiating for space at the Wheatsheaf, and there is no Primark store in Rochdale town centre. We are happy to hear from anyone with documented information, but we cannot report the claim as fact.

The bigger question is what the Wheatsheaf's story says about the town centre around it. The opening of Rochdale Riverside in 2020 concentrated the big names - M&S, Next, H&M, a cinema - on one modern site, and much of the older retail circuit has never recovered. Footfall on Yorkshire Street is a fraction of what it once was, and the units that remain trading lean heavily towards charity shops, discount stores and vape shops rather than the varied high street older residents remember. In that context, hundreds of new town centre homes may do more for Rochdale's shops than another retail scheme ever could: people who live in the centre spend in the centre.

Nothing is decided yet. The proposals must still go through the planning process, and residents will have the chance to comment when the outline application is submitted. But after six years of a dead shopping centre at the heart of the town, the direction of travel is now clear: the Wheatsheaf's future is homes, not shops.