Work starts this week on the £13.5m contract which is expected to complete in January 2013.

The development will consist of retail units and residential apartments.

The retail element will be called Warwickshire Shopping Park, with 24 retail units across three blocks and a gross floor area of over 14,000 square metres.

Work will include associated car parking, access and service roads as well as extensive hard and soft landscaping.

Key tenants have already been secured for the shopping park including Marks & Spencer, Asda, Arcadia and Boots.

The development will also include a residential block of 12 private apartments.

All the buildings are steel frame construction with either metal panel cladding or external cavity masonry walls with Lignacite facings and render. There is curtain walling to shop fronts with structural glazed canopies over.

David Diemer, Aviva Investors’ Real Estate Fund Manager said: “With a catchment of 750,000 people in a 20 minute drive time, we are expecting this to be a very successful shopping park for this area of the Midlands.

“This is why so much time has been spent on the design process and the choice of quality materials as we wanted to make sure that we built something that would complement the local area and provide positive benefits to the surrounding communities.”

Nick Guest of Citycourt Estates added: “This is a trophy development for all the businesses involved and we look forward to opening the park in 2013.”

The development of the project is being carried out in conjunction with John Lester Partnership (Employers Agents), R G Partnership (Architects), MLM Consulting (Structural Engineers), Waterman Building Services (Environmental Services Engineers) and Leslie Clark (Quantity Surveyors).