The Armada Centre is a

shopping centre A shopping center in American English, shopping centre in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English (see American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, spelling differences), shopping complex, shopping arcade, ...

Plymouth Plymouth ( ) is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Devon, South West England. It is located on Devon's south coast between the rivers River Plym, Plym and River Tamar, Tamar, about southwest of Exeter and ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. It was established in 1986 and refurbished in 2004. The centre is laid out on three floors, with

Sainsbury's J Sainsbury plc, trading as Sainsbury's, is a British supermarket and the second-largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane, London, the company was the largest UK r ...

occupying the upper floor. Other retailers that are housed on the ground floor include

Wilko Wilko.com Limited (trading as Wilko) is a British Variety store, variety retailer. It was founded as Wilkinson by James Kemsey Wilkinson and Mary Cooper in 1930 as a hardware retailer, opening its first store in Leicester. In 1972, Tony Wil ...

and

Laura Ashley Laura Ashley (née Mountney; 7 September 1925 – 17 September 1985) was a Welsh fashion designer and businesswoman. She originally made furnishing materials in the 1950s, expanding the business into clothing design and manufacture in the 1960s ...

. It had a skywalk to the Mayflower West car park, both since demolished after the car park was found to be structurally unsound.

History

In 1996, a planning company based in

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of symbols, often specifically those of a written language, by means of Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifacete ...

submitted an application to transform the Armada Centre into a new leisure centre, which would contain a 15-screen

multiplex cinema A multiplex is a movie theater complex with multiple screens or auditoriums within a single complex. They are usually housed in a specially designed building. Sometimes, an existing venue undergoes a renovation where the existing auditoriums a ...

nightclub A nightclub or dance club is a club that is open at night, usually for drinking, dancing and other entertainment. Nightclubs often have a Bar (establishment), bar and discotheque (usually simply known as disco) with a dance floor, laser lighti ...

and

bingo hall Bingo is a game of probability in which players mark off numbers on cards as the numbers are drawn randomly by a caller, the winner being the first person to mark off all their numbers. Bingo, previously known as Housey-Housey, became increas ...

Current owners

The freehold of the building is currently owned by the trustees of the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

pension trust fund.

References

External links

Official website
Buildings and structures in Plymouth, Devon Shopping centres in Devon {{devon-struct-stub