OUR sympathies are with the 160 staff at House of Fraser on Deansgate after the chain’s new owner Sports Direct billionaire Mike Ashley announced the iconic store – still known to most of us as kendals – is to close on January 28.
A further casualty if the battle to rescue it, already underway, is long-standing tenant San Carlo Cicchetti; the hugely popular Italian restaurant has entrances on both King Street West and straight into the store’s ground floor. It would have to move.
In an immediate response San Garlo Group boss Marcelo Distefano, who opened Cicchetti in 2010, tweeted: "Kendals is an institution in Manchester. To see it go would be a very sad loss for the city. Our family has a long relationship with the store, from the days when my father had Figaro barber shop in the basement to the first ever Cicchetti restaurant."
One contingency plan might be for the restaurant to move into the former 47 King Street West site opposite the ‘mothership’, San Carlo, who projected it as Pizza Madre before the project stalled last year. Here’s how it looks at the moment.
The notoriously hard-nosed Ashley paid £90m for the struggling House of Fraser group in August, then sacked the senior management team weeks later. The Deansgate store, there since 1832, had survived the initial round of closures, but now looks doomed. A possible ray of light is might be speculation it might be a bargaining ploy to get prime site rents reduced.
A spokesman from House of Fraser said: “We have suggested various options to the landlord that would have enabled us to save the store in Manchester. Sadly, these have been declined. We are now in consultation with staff about the fact that the store faces closure in the New Year.”