An entrance to St David's Shopping Centre, Swansea

St. David's Shopping Centre is a

shopping complex A shopping center (American English) or shopping centre (Commonwealth English), also called a shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof. The first known collec ...

in Swansea, south

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

. The complex is located adjacent to the

Quadrant Shopping Centre The Quadrant Shopping Centre is the principal under-cover shopping centre in Swansea, Wales. The centre opened in 1979. From the 1980s to 2019 it was home to the Swansea Devil, a controversial carved wooden statue of the Devil. The centre and ...

and opposite St Mary's Church. Completed in 1982, the complex has thus far been fairly unsuccessful, in terms of filling its outlet spaces and retaining customers. The complex consists of several buildings, clad in red brick, which comprise a number of

shop Shop or shopping refers to: Business and commerce * A casual word for a commercial establishment or for a place of business * Machine shop, a workshop for machining *"In the shop", referring to a car being at an automotive repair shop *A wood ...

units at ground level which are directly accessible from the street. There was a market hall on the first floor which is now closed. During the 1980s the upper floor area was open and contained many small stalls run by local traders. To the south of the complex lies the St. David's car park. An octagonal building located in the north west corner of the complex was occupied by S4C as a studio for a number of years. The studio was used for broadcasting the ''

Heno () is a Welsh television magazine and chat show programme. Broadcast live on S4C weeknights at 7:00 pm, it features topical stories and studio guests. Various reporters also assist with subject-specific presenting, both in the studio and ...

'' programme. The building was originally built to be occupied by a restaurant but it was never taken up for this purpose. For most of the building's lifetime so far, it has been unoccupied. Also, there have been many plans for the old shopping centre including demolition and expansion of the adjacent Quadrant shopping centre; or total demolition and to be replaced by a

multi-storey car park A multistorey car park ( British and Singapore English) or parking garage (American English), also called a multistory, parking building, parking structure, parkade (mainly Canadian), parking ramp, parking deck or indoor parking, is a bui ...

. If approved it would have led to the demolition of the Quadrant and St, Davids car parks to expand the Quadrant shopping centre. All of the plans include the Quadrant as an integral part. Swansea Council and the Welsh Government bought the complex in December 2011 with a plan to demolish the empty part of the site to create a 160 space car park. In 2018 it was announced that the shopping centre would be turned into a 3500-seater arena run as part of the AtG group.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint David's Shopping Centre (Swansea) Shopping in Swansea Commercial buildings completed in 1982 Buildings and structures in Swansea 1982 establishments in Wales