A NEW cinema and supermarket for North Chippenham are off the table after Langley Park was sold to a new investor.

MAS Real Estate bought the 48-acre industrial warehousing and office park for £32 million from Hansteen Holdings PLC, and assumed management of the site this month.

The investor is keen to keep the long-term tenants such as Siemens and IXYS, but will sell off 19 acres of mostly vacant space on the Hathaway side for mixed-use development.

They have dropped the former owner’s plans for both a supermarket, rumoured to be Asda, and a leisure facility hoped to be a cinema.

Ashtenne, whose property portfolio was acquired by Hansteen, fought for nearly a decade before winning outline planning permission that ultimately included these, and 115 homes, a year ago.

Clive Wilding, UK asset manager working on behalf of Mas, said: “We are certainly not looking for a food retail-led scheme. It will be more residential- led. We certainly don’t envisage a cinema.”

But he added that they were open to ideas.

Lukas Nakos, chief executive of MAS, which is based on the Isle of Man, said: “A development could include a hotel, some 20,000 sq ft of commercial space and up to 300 residential units.

"There is much need for centrally located residential accommodation in the town, which means these units are expected to be in great demand, also because prices here are considerably lower than in neighbouring towns.”

Chris Caswill, Wiltshire councillor for Monkton, said: “I am very much in favour of increasing the housing component on this brownfield site, taking pressure off Chippenham’s green spaces.

“That would be a big win.”