The Wall Group has confirmed the final phase of its £8 million investment at EUROSPAR Springfield Road in Belfast, redeveloping the forecourt and external environment and creating 40 new jobs. The phase completes a three-stage programme that turns an acquired neighbourhood store into a landmark roadside site on one of the main arterial routes into the city.

The scheme includes a redeveloped GO forecourt with new pumps and tanks, a new canopy, a new EUROSPAR store facade, additional parking, improved customer circulation and public realm works. Construction starts in September 2026 and is expected to finish in May 2027, with the store open throughout.

The Wall Group is a family-owned retailer founded by Gavan and Helen Wall, which grew from the smallest SPAR in the country, at just 468 square feet, into ten stores across Belfast and Newtownabbey employing over 300 people. Springfield Road was acquired in September 2025 from local retailer Brendan McKee.

The second phase, an internal refurbishment worth £1 million, reopened the 5,844 square foot store with a butchery counter, food-to-go deli and Subway concession. The store now trades 24 hours a day and employs 65 people following the creation of 20 jobs.

The structural driver is staged reinvestment in a single acquired site, with acquisition, interior refit and external rebuild sequenced so the store keeps trading while the forecourt is rebuilt around it.

"We deliberately wanted the architecture to be bold. This is a prominent site and we want the finished development to make a statement about our confidence in this community and in the future of the Lower Springfield Road," said Gavan Wall of The Wall Group.

"That is how areas which have suffered from a lack of investment begin to transform. One investment creates confidence for the next," he added.

Wall pointed to the group's GO filling station on the Crumlin Road, beside Crumlin Road Gaol, as an earlier example of the same approach in North and West Belfast.

For the sector, the programme shows an independent retailer using staged forecourt and facade investment to anchor wider neighbourhood regeneration.

Source: Belfast Media / Irish News / Wall Group / Talking Retail