The petrol station is just to the left of the slip road, where a second entrance road curves around.
For a supermarket it looks "ok" to me. Fairly low-profile, modest signage and reasonably good materials - redbrick to match surrounding housing, lots of glass and some shape to its roof, so it's not just a big box. It's good they seem to have two entrances, one from the car park and one fronting the road, meaning you don't have to dodge cars to get into the store by foot (take note, Co-op). There's a lack of trees though, they should be dotted through the car park to soften its vast expanse, and the two impressions above are very careful about what they show. The building looks ok, but they don't exactly show how it fits into the landscape, or how the car park and petrol station look. It's hard to picture what it'd actually look like from Hibbert Lane.
And they really have done their homework. 25,000 sq ft works out at 2322m²,
exactly the same floorspace as Tesco at Whaley Bridge. Of course, Tesco want to extend that store now, and ASDA could well do the same here on that car park in the upper corner, who knows. But compared to the hideous white box of that Tesco and the big signage on its roof, I think this doesn't look too bad at all.
I agree the amount of land left empty is hard to believe. "We guarantee to safeguard the existing open space on the Hibbert Lane site for future community use". Well, considering this supermarket information leaflet is yuckily titled "Community News", just what do ASDA consider "community use" to be? Anything by a major multinational looking for profit? Most likely though I think it could end up as houses.
Interested to see what else is shown at the event tomorrow, or if this is the only look we're getting.
