FOOD retailers are set to be at the heart of a retail park planned for the edge of Haddington.

Five retail units are planned for a site at Gateside previously earmarked for a Sainsbury’s supermarket and petrol station.

The site, which totals about 60,000 sq ft, could be made up of units ranging from 7,500 sq ft to 20,000 sq ft in size.

Alastair Dickie, development director with Ediston Real Estates, which now owns the site, attended the town’s community council meeting on Tuesday, one week before plans are unveiled to the public.

He told members the proposal was for the site to include three food retailers, with the other two units including “a household-type retail” business and a coffee drive-through facility.

However, he was keeping tight-lipped on the identity of the businesses until legal agreements were in place.

Mr Dickie hoped planning permission for the site, off Oak Tree Roundabout west of Haddington, could be achieved by the end of the year.

He said: “If we submit an application in August, we would hope. . . we would hopefully have a consent in December or January next year.

“We could be on site quarter one of 2019.”

It is then hoped that the retailers could be trading in the lead-up to Christmas that year or early in 2020.

The development, which has been described as “East Lothian’s first retail park”, will involve in the region of £14 million investment, with 150 jobs potentially created, as well as those during the construction process.

It has already been revealed that talks are ongoing with “a number of major retailers who will be new to East Lothian”.

Concerns have been expressed by a number of retailers in the town centre that the creation of a retail park on the outskirts would be detrimental to their business.

But Mr Dickie, who previously lived in the town and continues to stay in the county, was hopeful the additional retailers would encourage people to remain in the area rather than heading further afield to retail parks in Edinburgh.

The proposals are on display to the public from 2pm to 7pm on Tuesday at the John Gray Centre.

The developer is also continuing to make progress at a second Haddington site for retail development –at Harperdean, between the A1 and the A199, east of Aberlady Road. Mr Dickie said “other retailers” were interested in that site and they were looking to progress plans “relatively quickly”.