YORK'S premier shopping street has been given a massive boost with news that the former BHS store is finally set to re-open as shops selling sportswear, cycles and fashion clothing.

Signs have appeared outside the long empty department store in Coney Street proclaiming: 'USC ... brand new shopping experience...coming soon' and 'Sports Direct.com York opening soon.'

And a second entrance to the former BHS, just around the corner in Feasegate, has another Sports Direct sign and also one stating: "Evans Cycles coming soon.'

The third former BHS entrance in New Street already has signs indicating it is to become Flannels, an upmarket fashion store, following a refurbishment.

BHS has stood empty and boarded up since 2016, becoming one of almost a dozen empty shop premises in Coney Stree

Evans Cycles, a specialist bike shop, was placed into administration last year before being sold to Mike Ashley's Sports Direct International. Some Evans shops elsewhere in the UK have since faced closure.

Sports Direct also owns USC, which sells mens, womens and children's branded fashion.

Sports Direct already has its own store in York city centre, in Davygate, and the opening of a new outlet in Coney Street appears to throw a question mark over the future of those premises.

The opening of the new stores in Coney Street comes as the street has already been undergoing a mini-revival, with The Press reporting recently that a long empty shop next to Waterstones had re-opened as a phone shop, reducing the number of empty shops to seven.

Another long empty shop, the former Burgins perfumery on the edge of St Helen’s Square, also looks set to re-open shortly as a Lucky Days cafe, provided City of York Council grants permission for the change of use.

However, a cloud does continue to hang over the street with plans to shut the large Burtons/Dorothy Perkins store -just across the road from BHS - under a CVA agreement to rescue troubled parent company Arcadia.

Andrew Hedley, of Blacks Property Consultants, said recently that the re-openings were in line with previous predictions he had made that Coney Street would eventually revive, adding:“What goes around comes around, and there’s always new kids on the block."

He felt that in the face of numerous empty properties, landlords were being more realistic in the rents they were hoping to achieve.