Blackpool's Edith Centre which is home to McDonalds, Bonmarché and Poundstretcher up for sale at £3.2 million

A well-known Blackpool building has been put up for sale with a multi-million-pound price tag.
The Edith Centre in BlackpoolThe Edith Centre in Blackpool
The Edith Centre in Blackpool

The Edith Centre on Bank Hey Street is most famous for its McDonalds restaurant but originally opened as an Marks and Spencer back in the 1930s.

As well as McDonalds, the building is currently occupied by clothes shop Bonmarché and discount retailer Poundstretcher.

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Retailer Argos also had a unit but this is currently vacant and being advertised as a letting.

It is being advertised by Duxburys Commercial for £3.2 million who estimate the building has an estimated rental value of £345,000 annually.

The sale of the building is not expected to affect the current leases at the building.

Originally opened as an M&S store, inset, on July 28, 1939, Gazette adverts of the time proclaimed “another super store in Blackpool”.

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Soon after the Bank Hey Street store opened, with the outbreak of the Second World War, the ground floor became an RAF clothing depot and the first floor was converted into offices for the evacuated staff from M&S head office in Baker Street, London.

It was the second M&S in the resort, following the Church Street outlet, and it shut its doors in 1980.

The McDonalds opened two years later as the first in Blackpool and has been there ever since.

The whole site was given the title ‘The Edith Centre’ after the founder and wife of one of the directors of the property company which purchased the building from M&S in 1980, although ownership has changed several times since then.

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Paul Humble of Blackpool Civic Trust said: “It’s a building I have always admired and it has some really nice and interesting features.”

One of the notable features of the building are the relief sculptures of seagulls in flight over stylised waves along the upper part of the building.