St. David's Shopping Centre is a

shopping complex A shopping center in American English, shopping centre in Commonwealth English (see spelling differences), shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza, or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof. The fir ...

Swansea Swansea ( ; ) is a coastal City status in the United Kingdom, city and the List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, second-largest city of Wales. It forms a Principal areas of Wales, principal area, officially known as the City and County of ...

, south

Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...

. 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 an ...

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 may refer 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 * Reta ...

units at ground level which are directly accessible from the

street A street is a public thoroughfare in a city, town or village, typically lined with Building, buildings on one or both sides. Streets often include pavements (sidewalks), pedestrian crossings, and sometimes amenities like Street light, streetligh ...

. 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 S4C (, ''Sianel Pedwar Cymru'', meaning ''Channel Four Wales'') is a Welsh language free-to-air public broadcast television channel. Launched on 1 November 1982, it was the first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speakin ...

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 on ...

'' programme. The building was originally built to be occupied by a

restaurant A restaurant is an establishment that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and Delivery (commerce), food delivery services. Restaurants ...

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 (Commonwealth English) or parking garage (American English), also called a multistorey, parking building, parking structure, parkade (Canadian), parking ramp, parking deck, or indoor parking, is a building designed fo ...

. 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 April 2018 it was announced that the shopping centre site would be turned into a 3,500-seater arena run as part of the

Ambassador Theatre Group ATG Entertainment, formerly The Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG), is a major international live entertainment organisation headquartered in the United Kingdom, with offices in Woking (head office), London, New York, Sydney, Mannheim and Cologne. ...

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