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A grade II listed former post office in Wolverhampton city centre could now be converted into a supermarket. Georgina Konadu has submitted plans to City of Wolverhampton Council for permission to turn the ground floor and basement of the 130-year-old Grant Post House in Lichfield Street into the supermarket. Ms Konadu, who also owns the adjoining Sweet Elohim Afro Market, was given permission by the local authority to transform the empty building into a restaurant and function room last August. The planning application lists the opening hours as 11am to 3am. Earlier this year, Ms Konadu was fined £11,000 after a rat infestation was found at her Sweet Elohim Afro Market in 2023. The store was forced to close after Wolverhampton’s environmental health officers found rat droppings throughout the Lichfield Street store including next to sinks in food preparation areas and among open fruit and vegetables, tins, jars and packets. She pleaded guilty to two hygiene breaches at Dudley Magistrates Court in February this year. The planning application, approved in 2024, said the outside of the tired building, which was Wolverhampton’s head post office until the 1960s, would be tidied up and broken windows replaced. The drawings submitted with the application show a hall with 82 covers, as well as a restaurant and bar and a sitting room. The building’s ground floor would be converted into a kitchen, lobby and toilets. The grade II listed Grand Post House was built in 1895 and remained the city’s chief post office until the 1960s. The building was then refurbished as offices and teaching rooms and used by the University of Wolverhampton until 2007 where it has remained ‘mostly’ empty since. British Gas engineers stumbled on more than 1,000 cannabis plants in the cellar of the Grand Post House in 2022. It took police officers two days to clear the estimated £1 million haul from the empty city centre building – just minutes away from Wolverhampton police station. Wolverhampton Council had approved plans in 2014 to convert much of the building into a new student union for the University of Wolverhampton as well as provide a space for concerts, wedding receptions, conferences, fairs and exhibitions. However, the work was never carried out.
