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SWANSEA: St David’s car park all but gone as diggers chew through the last of the decks

The St David’s car park is almost gone.

Photographs taken from above the site on Monday morning show the multi-storey reduced to a field of crushed concrete and brick, with at least four excavators working across it.

The last of the structure is at the St David’s Place end, where a long-reach demolition machine was tearing into what remains of the decks.

A painted “lock it” car-security sign was still on an inside wall as the jaws worked alongside it.

A long-reach machine tears into the last of the decks at the St David’s Place end (Image: Swansea Bay News)

When the signs came down at the start of the month, crews were still stripping the building floor by floor.

Now the rest of the site is flat. Crushed concrete covers the ground where the upper decks stood, and steel reinforcing bar pulled from it is piling up in skips.

Steel reinforcing bar in the rubble as a Cardiff Demolition machine works the site (Image: Swansea Bay News)

Hoardings around the site carry the names of Cardiff Demolition Co Ltd and Andrew Scott Ltd, the firm that completed the Copr Bay North car park next door after its original contractor went into administration.

Oystermouth Road drivers can now see across the site to St David’s Church

For four decades, drivers heading into the city centre along Oystermouth Road were met by a red-brick wall of parking decks.

Now there is open ground behind the hoardings, with St David’s Church and the flats beyond it in full view from the road.

The view across the cleared site from Oystermouth Road towards St David’s Church (Image: Swansea Bay News)

The car park closed for good on 13 July, the same morning Copr Bay North opened its 628 spaces next door, with St David’s season ticket holders moved across.

Its signs, including the little bishop in a mitre who welcomed drivers into town, were taken down before demolition began and handed to Swansea Museum for safekeeping, the council says.

What Porth Copr will bring to the St David’s site

The cleared ground becomes part of Porth Copr, the council’s regeneration scheme with Urban Splash. The council says it will bring new office, learning and commercial space to the city centre, with new public spaces around St David’s Church.

Council leader Cllr Rob Stewart called the demolition “another visible sign of progress” when work began.

“This is a significant site in the heart of Swansea and its transformation will help support investment, jobs and city centre activity for years to come,” he said.

Swansea Arena and Meridian Tower beyond the hoardings as machines work behind them (Image: Swansea Bay News)

In July he promised further announcements “in the coming weeks” about plans for the former St David’s Shopping Centre site.

No start date has been announced for the main build. Surveys and ground investigations have been carried out ahead of it, the council says.

The car park outlived most of the St David’s Shopping Centre it was built to serve by five years, and the Llys Dewi Sant flats next door by four.

One of the last surviving pieces of the old shopping centre still stands beside the site. High on its red-brick wall is the same little bishop in a mitre, with “St David” in white letters beside him.

The St David bishop sign on one of the last surviving parts of the former St David’s Shopping Centre, beside the car park site (Image: Swansea Bay News)

The bishop who greeted drivers from the car park is safe in Swansea Museum. His twin is still up on the wall next door, looking over the rubble.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

SWANSEA: The car park is coming down, but the saint who welcomed you into town is saved for the museum
How the bishop signs went to Swansea Museum before the diggers moved in.

COPR BAY: Opening day named for long-delayed car park, and a city centre car park closing the same day
The July announcement that sealed St David’s fate.

Porth Copr
Every story on the plans for the former St David’s site.

#CoprBay #demolition #PorthCopr #StDavidSCarPark #SwanseaCityCentre #SwanseaCouncil