Cardiff Bay Retail Park, Ferry Road: Shops, Parking, Directions and Opening Times

A big-box terrace on the Ferry Road peninsula in Grangetown, anchored by a 24-hour Asda, with Aldi, Lidl, B&M, Home Bargains and Iceland Food Warehouse all on the same site. It has no website. None at all — not a holding page, not a directory, nothing. It also has two names: the letting agents and Cardiff Council call it Cardiff Bay Retail Park, while Asda calls the very same postcode Ferry Road Retail Park. Here is what can actually be verified about it, who published each figure, and the long list of things nobody publishes.

Last checked 10 September 2026 · Opening times and store lists change — check with the centre before travelling.

Cardiff Bay Retail Park sits on Ferry Road in Grangetown, on the peninsula between the River Taff and the A4232, a couple of miles due south of the city centre. It is a straightforward out-of-town terrace of large units wrapped around a level car park, anchored by an Asda superstore that trades 24 hours from Tuesday morning to Saturday night. The satnav postcode is CF11 0JR.

Start with the thing that makes this park unusual to write about: there is no operator website. We looked twice, from every angle we know — search, the letting agents, the directory aggregators, the tenants themselves — and there is nothing. The clearest proof is that ukmalls.co.uk, a directory whose entire job is to print a centre's web address, gives this park's website as completelyretail.co.uk — the letting-agent marketplace — because there is nothing else to give.

That matters more than it sounds. On most parks the hours, the parking rules and the store list come from the landlord. Here not one line does: everything below is a letting agent's brochure, a tenant's store locator, the planning register, the trade press, an archive catalogue or a crowd-sourced database, and every line says which.

Then there is the name. Search for "Cardiff Bay Retail Park" and you get the letting agents, the planning applications and the directories. Search for "Ferry Road Retail Park" and you get Asda, Yelp and Parkopedia. They are the same place, same postcode. Asda's own store locator prints the address as "Ferry Road Retail Park, Cardiff CF11 0JR"; Cardiff Council's planning register files applications on the same units as "Cardiff Bay Retail Park, Ferry Road, Grangetown". Nobody reconciles the two, so if you are looking for a shop here, try both names.

What follows also draws a hard line around what is not part of this park: Wales's only IKEA is next door but separate, and the Asda at Capital Retail Park on Leckwith Road is a different Asda at a different scheme a mile and a half away.

The combination of tenants, a secure income profile and some interesting asset management opportunities make Cardiff Bay Retail Park an excellent investment opportunity.

The essentials

Opening times

There is no park-wide opening time, because there is nobody to publish one. Every row above is either a tenant speaking about its own store or a crowd-sourced database, and says which. Checked 10 September 2026.

The two rows we trust most are Asda and Home Bargains, both from the retailer's own store locator rather than an aggregator. They agree on the Sunday window — 10.30am to 4.30pm, the standard six-hour Sunday trading limit for large stores in England and Wales. Parkopedia's crowd-sourced car park times land on the same shape, decent corroboration even though it is not authoritative.

Asda is the reason to know these hours. It trades round the clock from Tuesday morning to Saturday night, with the petrol station open 24 hours daily. If you need a supermarket at three in the morning in Cardiff, this is one of the few places that has one — but the rest of the park will be shut, and if the crowd-sourced three-hour parking limit is real, the car park's rules may not be suspended just because Asda is open.

Four tenant routes failed and we are recording that rather than papering over it. Boots' own store page returned a 403; Lidl's store finder returned a 404 on the exact URL search had indexed; Aldi's was blocked by a robots.txt file too large to parse. And the usual fallbacks do not apply: Next, H&M and Mango are the chains whose store pages we normally use to crack a park's hours, and none trades here. This is a value and grocery park, not a fashion one.

So we can tell you when Asda and Home Bargains are open and what shape the car park keeps. We cannot tell you when Boots, Aldi, Lidl, B&M, Pets at Home, JD Sports, Sports Direct, Blacks, TUI, PureGym, Popeyes, Costa or McDonald's trade, and nobody publishes Christmas or bank holiday hours for any of it.

Getting there

By road

Use the postcode CF11 0JR, and do not expect a junction number, because nobody publishes one. There is no operator to publish one and we are not going to invent it. What exists is the letting agents' description: completelyretail says the park "fronts the A4232 dual carriageway and is located due south of Cardiff City Centre", and EJ Hales says it "benefits from proximity to the A4232 Peripheral Distributor Road and Cogan Spur". That is the whole of the authoritative road guidance in existence.

The most detailed directions in existence come from the listing site See Around Britain, and we print them as theirs: from Cardiff take the A4232 towards the bay, exit at the A4055 signposted Barry and Penarth, left at the roundabout, through the lights, and the park is on the right.

Parking

Parking is free, on a large level surface car park with disabled bays distributed around it. The space count is disputed: the letting agent's brochure and the LoopNet listing both say 960 spaces, Parkopedia says 700. Parkopedia is crowd-sourced, so we lean towards the agent, but we print both because we cannot check either against a landlord.

The maximum stay is the thing to be careful about. Parkopedia records a three-hour limit enforced by UK Parking Control — crowd-sourced and unconfirmed, but entirely plausible for a park of this type, and a parking charge notice is an expensive way to find out. Parkopedia also lists the Asda car park as a separate entry from the terrace car park, which suggests the two are administered separately even though they are one site. No height restriction is published by anyone authoritative, so read the signs on arrival.

By bus

See Around Britain gives services 8, 9 and 9A at Ferry Road stops. Open bus data partly corroborates it: Cardiff Bus route 8 runs "City Centre – Grangetown – Cardiff Bay & Atlantic Wharf", route 9 runs via Grangetown, and 93S is "Cardiff – Ferry Road – Redlands Road". None of those datasets names the retail park itself as a stop and no frequency is published, so treat the numbers as a starting point and check with Traveline Cymru on 0800 464 0000.

By train

The nearest station is given as Cogan, with Grangetown also close by. No walking distance or time is published for either by anybody — not by a landlord, because there is none, not by the rail operators, not by the agents. We would rather say so than guess at a number of minutes. No taxi rank, coach parking or cycle parking is confirmed here either.

Accessibility

There is no park-wide accessibility information, and this is the biggest single gap on the page. No AccessAble guide, no Euan's Guide entry, no landlord statement — because there is no landlord page. The only accessible provision we can state as fact is inside Asda, from Asda's own store page: accessible toilets, cash machines, wheelchairs, mobility scooters and adapted trolleys. See Around Britain adds that the car park is level with disabled bays distributed across it.

Nobody publishes a Changing Places toilet, a Shopmobility scheme or a quiet room for this park. If any of those decides your trip, ring Asda on 029 2034 0276 — it is the only tenant here with published accessibility provision.

The shops

With no landlord directory to read, the store list comes from the letting agent's own site plan and Cardiff Council's planning register. Fletcher Morgan's brochure, dated to January 2024 by its file path, names fifteen occupiers: Asda as anchor, plus Sports Direct, Home Bargains, Lidl, TUI, PureGym, B&M, Iceland Food Warehouse, Boots, Pets at Home, Blacks, JD Sports, McDonald's, Costa Coffee and Popeyes.

The brochure is missing Aldi

Cardiff Council's planning register carries two applications filed against an address given as "Aldi Cardiff Bay Retail Park, Ferry Road, Grangetown, Cardiff CF11 0JR": 23/01386/ADV, for "two temporary bilingual banners mounted on timber frame backing", received 16 June 2023 and approved 12 July 2023; and a follow-up, 24/00203/NMA. Temporary bilingual banners on a timber frame are launch signage. So Aldi trades here and the letting agent's own brochure does not show it. One of the two is out of date and we cannot tell which — but the council's register is the harder record, so we count Aldi in.

That gives this park an unusual line-up: Asda, Aldi and Lidl on the same site, with Iceland Food Warehouse, Home Bargains and B&M alongside. Six value or grocery operators on one terrace tells you what this place is for — a weekly-shop destination with sports and pet retail attached, not a fashion park.

What has gone, with a date

Wilko closed here on Tuesday 12 September 2023. That comes from ITV News Wales on 11 September 2023, listing the Welsh stores going in the collapse: it named "Cardiff Bay Retail Park" and "Queen Street, Cardiff" as the two Cardiff branches, closing on the 12th and the 14th. It is the only fully dated event in this park's recent history that anyone has published. The ukmalls directory still lists Wilko three years on — a useful reminder of how stale third-party directories get when no operator site is correcting them.

What has gone, without a date

The trade coverage of the 2011 sale described the park as let to Boots, Argos and BhS, alongside Asda and IKEA — and, oddly, to the Welsh Government. BHS collapsed nationally in 2016 and Argos moved almost its entire estate inside Sainsbury's, but no local closure date is published for either here and we are not going to construct one from the national timeline. What the Welsh Government was doing with space on a Cardiff retail park is explained nowhere at all.

A tenant change nobody has announced

In August 2024 an advertisement consent application, 24/01953/ADV, was lodged for Unit A2: "installation of 2 No. new internally illuminated sign panels over the existing fascia signage and 1 No. non-illuminated signage to the rear", validated on 28 August 2024, decision not shown. New fascia panels fitted over existing signage generally means a new occupier. Which occupier is not published anywhere.

Space available

Fletcher Morgan markets up to 35,330 sq ft here, "suitable for leisure or other alternative uses subject to planning" in its own words, and EJ Hales is marketing a 0.91-acre parcel of "surplus car park" adjoining Asda, freehold and with vacant possession. One big box looking for a leisure occupier and a slice of the car park for sale outright is a fair picture of where this park is.

Useful to know

Asda's quieter hour

This is the single most useful practical fact about the site, and it comes from Asda's own store page: "We are offering a quieter hour 2.00pm - 3.00pm every Monday to Thursday", with reduced noise. If you or someone you shop with finds a busy superstore hard going, that is the window. It is Asda's provision inside Asda, not a park-wide scheme — nothing park-wide exists here.

Everything else Asda has that the park does not

The anchor is doing the work of a management office here, so it is worth listing what Asda's own page says is on site: accessible toilets, cash machines, wheelchairs, mobility scooters, adapted trolleys, George with click and collect, Scan & Go, a 24-hour petrol station, a drive-thru collection point open 6am to 8pm most days, and concessions including Krispy Kreme, Costa Express, Max Spielmann and Timpson.

Three names, one place — and two places that are not it

Cardiff Bay Retail Park and Ferry Road Retail Park are the same site. The letting agents and Cardiff Council use the first name; Asda, Yelp and Parkopedia use the second. If a shop you want does not show up under one name, search the other.

IKEA is next door, not inside. Both agent sources are careful about this: completelyretail says the park is "anchored by an Asda superstore and adjacent to Wales' only IKEA store", and Fletcher Morgan says "adjacent to Ikea's only store in Wales". Adjacent, not within — Wales's only IKEA has its own car park and its own hours and is not part of this scheme.

The Asda at Leckwith is a different Asda. Capital Retail Park on Leckwith Road, about a mile and a half north-west, is a wholly separate scheme with its own Asda superstore and its own Next. Asda files them under different store-locator addresses — ferry-road-retail-park for this one, capital-retail-park-leckwith-road for that — and people book collections at the wrong branch constantly. Dunleavy Drive Retail Park at CF11 0SR is another separate scheme on the same peninsula.

Things nobody publishes at all

No footfall figure has ever been released for this park, by anyone, in any year. There is no gift card, no Wi-Fi statement, no lost property arrangement, no dogs policy, no park-wide quiet hours and no centre manager or managing agent named anywhere. Absent from the public record is not the same as absent from the park — a site with an Asda and a McDonald's plainly has toilets and baby-changing — but we will not print what we cannot source.

Other Welsh parks we have written up

If you are comparing across south Wales, Newport Retail Park at Spytty is the nearest scheme of a similar type and scale, Parc Trostre at Llanelli is the big west Wales equivalent, and Bridgend Designer Outlet is a completely different animal — an outlet village rather than a big-box terrace — half an hour along the M4.

How it got here

The ground is the story here, and it is a better one than the shops. The Ferry Road peninsula was the site of the Ferry Road landfill, which operated from 1969 to 1994 and took over four million cubic metres of waste — the largest tip in Wales. Grangemoor Park, the grassed hill alongside, is the capped mound; the retail park is on the flat ground beside it. Set that against the only opening date anyone publishes — 1997, from a single commercial-property listing — and the sequence makes sense: tipping stopped in 1994, and the sheds went up three years later.

That history has not gone away. In 2021 Natural Resources Wales confirmed the former landfill was releasing leachate into Cardiff Bay, after residents first noticed pollution in 2017. A Cardiff Council spokesperson described "a large, complex, network of pipes laid through what was once a heavily-industrialised area and then a major landfill site" — an unnamed spokesperson, so not an attribution we would build a page on, but the NRW finding itself is on the record.

The Development Corporation, and where the second name comes from

Glamorgan Archives holds Cardiff Bay Development Corporation records catalogued under the name "Ferry Road Retail Park" — a "Ferry Road Retail Park map" at DCBDC/12/20/166, "Ferry Road and peninsula" at DCBDC/12/21/73, and "Peninsula, Windsor Quay and ASDA" at DCBDC/12/6/27. The detailed records sit behind a sign-in, so no dates could be read. What the catalogue establishes is that the Development Corporation was involved during the Cardiff Bay regeneration years and that the scheme was called Ferry Road Retail Park then — almost certainly why Asda still uses the older name.

Ownership: one hard fact, fifteen years old

On 26 July 2011, Orchard Street Investment Management bought Cardiff Bay Retail Park for £54.5m at a 6.25% net initial yield, from Invista Real Estate Management and Schroders. Orchard Street's own announcement, CoStar and PropertyEU agree on the buyer, price, sellers and yield — as clean a corroboration as a fifteen-year-old deal gets. The park was described then as let to the Welsh Government, Boots, Argos and BhS, alongside Asda and IKEA.

But Orchard Street is an investment manager, not a beneficial owner, and none of the reports names the fund or client it bought for. That is why our owner row says "unresolved" rather than naming Orchard Street outright. Estates Gazette also ran a story headlined "Schroders buys last phase of Cardiff Bay Retail Park", which tells us the park was built and traded in phases and that Schroders held the last one before 2011 — but both of its hosts refused to serve us the article, one with a 403 and the other with an expired security certificate, so the phase dates and sizes could not be read.

No sale has been reported since 2011. Fifteen years with nothing in the trade press is unusual for a park this size. Two loose ends remain, recorded as leads rather than findings. Directory listings carry the site under the entity name "Cardiff Bay Retail Park Trust", which points at a unit-trust holding structure of the kind commonly used for schemes like this; Yelp blocked us on both its hosts. And the freehold parcel of surplus car park now being sold with vacant possession means the site is not necessarily in single ownership at all.

The park is not in Cardiff's replacement local plan

One small finding for anyone researching the future of this site: Cardiff Council's Replacement Deposit Local Development Plan 2021 to 2036, published in January 2025, contains no mention of Cardiff Bay Retail Park, of Ferry Road, or of out-of-centre retail warehouse parks in any form we could find. The council's Cardiff Bay Peninsula brochure of October 2022 covers the same ground and mentions only a former Toys R Us box the council bought in 2019, which is at the International Sports Village rather than in the retail park. For a park this size in a city this size, that silence is worth knowing.