COUNCIL leaders dismayed at a threat to Bishop Auckland's only department store are asking the owners to choose the area for an alternative development.
Wear Valley District Council plans to lobby the Manchester-based Co-op group to ask them to pilot a new Home Store in the Bishop Auckland area to save jobs.
The Co-op announced last week it was closing or selling off all 36 of its department stores across the country.
If it has not managed to sell the Bishop Auckland store, in Newgate Street, by February 2007, it will close.
The group has two non-food Home Stores it is piloting in Perth and Tunbridge Wells, and plans another two on out-of-town retail parks next year.
Council leader Neil Stonehouse said: "It is doubly sad because the Co-operative Group will be vacating a prime town centre site in Bishop Auckland just when new and exciting plans to develop and improve the town centre are coming to fruition."
Co-op spokesman Steve Warren said decisions on Home Store would be taken nationally - but was hopeful that the Bishop Auckland store would be bought by the Anglian Co-operative Society, which trades as Westgate Department Stores.
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