A well-known hair and beauty salon and a brand new, Italian-inspired pasta and sandwich bar are the first businesses to take space at Barrack Lane Retail Quarter, the £3.5m retail and residential development funded and owned by Linc Cymru.
Rapture Hair and Beauty, which was previously located on Church Street Cardiff, has just opened for business while Bramina Limited, is expected to start trading in June, offering lunchtime customers fast-served home-made Italian food.
They will be joined by a well-established city centre cafe bar operator who will open “The Grazing Shed”, a brand-new fast food concept, later in the year.
The 19,000 sq ft Barrack Lane Retail Quarter is adjacent to St David’s Dewi Sant and Admiral’s new Cardiff Headquarters. Linc’s vision is to provide high quality landlord services and leases on flexible terms that provide new businesses with the best possible opportunity to be successful. Barrack Lane contains a total of nine pavement frontage retail/commercial units, four of which have now been let, and there is strong interest from businesses in the remaining units.
It also includes 27 residential apartments on the upper three floors that provide affordable living for city centre workers, all of which are fully occupied and there is always high demand for vacancies.
Robert Smith, Chief Executive of Linc, said: “The Barrack Lane Retail Quarter has seen a surge of interest in recent months from businesses that recognise the huge retail potential of this prime city centre location.
“The area already enjoys high footfall, and with 3,000 employees due to move into the Admiral headquarters which is under construction just a short distance away, we can expect this to increase significantly in 2014.”
Rapture Hair and Beauty was launched in 2005 and employs 6 staff. Owner Laura Corns has moved into the new premises at Barrack Lane to increase the visual impact of her business and take advantage of the higher footfall and passing trade the area offers.
Ms. Corns said: “Our new salon at Barrack Lane provides me and my team with the perfect platform to deliver a high-quality service to our existing customers, while reaching out to new clientele and growing the business.
“This area of the city is really up-and-coming and the new retail space has hugely increased our passing trade that will enable me to further enhance the Rapture Hair and Beauty brand.”
Daniela Ferrari, owner of Bramina Limited said: “Being Welsh Italian, I wanted to bring the people of Wales a taste of Italy with our new pasta concept brand, serving delicious Italian-style food, fast. Cardiff was an obvious choice as it is a vibrant city that is receptive to new concepts.
“After searching for premises in the city centre, we found what we were looking for in Barrack Lane. Its central location is fantastic and what’s more it provides us with the privilege of becoming part of an independent retail community.”
The remaining five retail units at Barrack Lane are available to lease through joint letting agents E J Hales and DTZ . Andrew Gibson, DTZ and Owen Cahill, EJ Hales commented jointly:
“Barrack Lane is fast becoming a cost effective up and coming city centre location for businesses to set up a stone’s throw away from the prime pitch of St David’s Dewi Sant and The Hayes.”