THE owner of Weston’s TJ Hughes store say it has to choose between two businesses interested in taking on the disused unit.

Dove Properties, who bought the site nine months ago, is keeping its options open with contractors set to soon start renovating the inside of the High Street building.

The unit has not been used since TJ Hughes moved out in August 2011. When Dove took on the premises it said reopening the flats at the top of the site was being considered.

Tim Warrell, its consultant property and development manager, indicated this week that option was still possible – although depending on the scale of work, that may require planning permission from North Somerset Council.

He said: “We have some internal works to the building out to tender at present and hope to do these this summer.

“We continue to explore the future use of the upper parts and until we can determine this, we cannot commit to a timescale for re-letting the ground floor, but we still have an occupier lined up who would take part of the ground floor if we decided to split it.

“We also have interest from a national retailer in the whole building, so we are keeping our options open at this stage.”

The Mercury asked who the interested parties are and what sort of business they operated, but Mr Warrell refused to comment.