CALUM MACDONALD and CATE DEVINE
Tesco has struck a deal with a Scottish Premier League side over the sale of one of the oldest football stadiums in the country, which will be demolished to make way for a supermarket.
Love Street in Paisley, which has been the home of St Mirren for 112 years, is to be sold to the supermarket chain which will build the club a new stadium in the town.
Assuming Tesco proceeds with construction on the site, it will mean yet another branch of its rapidly expanding empire being created in the west of Scotland.
A new store on the Love Street site would be just three-and-a-half miles from a massive new Tesco development planned for Linwood, where the chain is to take over the entire town centre.
Another possibility is that it holds on to the site in its land bank, effectively preventing commercial rivals from exploiting a potentially lucrative site near the centre of Scotland's largest town. The deal has been agreed in principle by both sides, but is subject to planning conditions.
St Mirren currently has debts of at least £2m, but it has been claimed the club's liabilities are as much as £5m. If the sale is confirmed, St Mirren could begin the 2008-09 season debt-free at a new home in the Ferguslie Park area of Paisley.
A previous deal between the club and the Sainsbury's supermarket chain over the sale of Love Street fell through last year.
Stewart Gilmour, St Mirren chairman, confirmed yesterday an agreement had been reached with Tesco, the UK's biggest supermarket chain.
He said: "It's a long way from being completed, but we have an agreement in principle. There are still some planning conditions to be ironed out."
The deal follows the sales of Broomfield Park by now-defunct Airdrieonians to Safeway in 1994 and St Johnstone's Muirton Park in Perth to Asda in 1986.
A Tesco spokesman said the company was committed to developments in Renfrewshire but refused to comment on the Love Street plan.
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