A TOWN centre leisure attraction for kids has celebrated the reopening of its new larger store this week, after upsizing due to demand.

Tot City, based in the Chantry Centre, opened the doors of its new larger unit on Monday, after moving just around the corner from a nearby store also in the shopping centre.

Louise Benning and her business partner Ronelle Wiid had eight days to makeover the unit, which previously housed NatWest bank and had been empty for the last three years.

Louise said: “We took 10 days from the old place to the new one. [The old one] was a quarter of the size of this one but we had to expand because we had so many people that we had to keep sending people away because there wasn’t enough space.

“In the town centres, there is no more shopping happening, all shopping is closing and it’s all about leisure facilities.

“It’s in the national papers and the news all the time and we are trendsetting doing a leisure facility in a predominantly retail premises and the councillors granted us the permission to do these things which they never would have before.

“Me and my husband and my business partner built all of this ourselves, we didn’t get anybody in to help.

“We’ve got a café in here now which is a lot better than the other one which only had one couch. Now we have four couches, coffee tables, dining tables and we’re serving a better selection of food and drink.

“We can also run multiple children’s parties together where before we used to run one party at a time because we didn’t have enough space.”

Tot City offers nine themed areas for children aged up to five to play, including a baby area, construction site, play kitchen, doctors surgery, a shop, hair salon, theatre, garden with a slide and ride-on cars.

Test Valley mayor Ian Carr and his wife Beryl Carr came to officially open the facility.

Cllr Carr said: “I think its good that an existing town centre business has found it necessary to expand, becoming bigger and better, encouraging more people to come into the town centre.

“You can see how busy it is in here and you have a look around each of the different sections and it’s all good stuff. You could sit for hours and play with the kids”