THE keys to new shops and restaurants in Yate’s brand new and highly-anticipated cinema are being handed over to the High Street chains due to open before Christmas.

Next, Pets at Home, Prezzo, Nandos, Frankie and Benny’s and Dean’s Diner will all take control of units at Yate Riverside, the name given to the £25million development in Yate Shopping Centre’s former overflow car park, in the next week.

The retailers and restaurant chains will then start fitting out the shops before the first opening which could be as early as mid-November.

Shopping centre manager Andy Lowrey said: “Frankie and Benny’s are looking to open on November 16 and others will open in the first two weeks of December. The cinema is on track to open at Easter 2016.

“We are really pleased with it and although we still have one retail unit and one restaurant still to lease, we are confident we will do that very quickly.”

The development, funded by shopping centre owners Crestbridge Corporate Trustees, has been built in record time having only won planning permission from South Gloucestershire Council last May and construction only starting in earnest at the beginning of this year.

Pete Harvey, project manager for developers ISG which also built Yate’s Tesco Extra store and the shopping centre’s East Walk extension, said: “Timing was our biggest challenge.

“Although overall the timescale was reasonable the sequence in which everything had to happen was a challenge.

“If we missed a week it would have done a lot more than week’s damage.”

The 100,000 square feet development has seen 4,680 tradesmen work on the project.

Mark Hull, property developer for Crestbridge, said: “It has been a great build and is on budget and on time.

“The units are 70 per cent let and we are about to increase that over the next few weeks.”

He said he hoped the development would complement Yate Shopping Centre itself with customers using both the existing shops and new complex and create an evening economy in the town.

“It is all starting to come together and is a bigger statement in terms of what Yate has to offer,” he said. “The whole area is starting to regenerate.”

Cllr Tony Davis, mayor of Yate, said: “I am absolutely delighted because we have waited a very long time for a cinema in particular.

“The vast majority of people in Yate have been crying out for it and now it is going to be delivered.”