Major plans brewing for Vaux site
The former Vaux Brewery site , once a metaphor for Sunderland ’ s inertia and decline , now acts as its lodestar , guiding the city towards a potential renaissance on so many levels .
Graeme Anderson looks at the rise and rise of Riverside Sunderland and what it signals for the future .
For those investing so much time and energy in reviving the Riverside site in the centre of Sunderland , the proof that it ’ s not how you start but how you finish that counts lies just across the waters of the Wear .
The Stadium of Light on the north bank of the river is one of the finest football grounds in the country but who now remembers the years of drift , frustration and uncertainty which preceded the move ?
So it will be with the Riverside site which stood as a wasteland eyesore for more than a decade after the closure of the sprawling Vaux brewery in 1999 .
Delays to developing the site were so long and at times so unlikely that it was hard to escape the suspicion one too many black cats had crossed the city centre wilderness .
But in recent times , every bit of news coming out of the site has been good .
And the sense of tangible excitement as new schemes are unveiled , projects are begun and buildings rise from the ground is lifting spirits even in a time of Covid-19 – maybe especially in a time of Covid-19 .
That ’ s because the scale , extent and ambition of the Riverside Sunderland development , allied to adjoining developments , promises to spark an uplift in city centre fortunes to justify the word : Renaissance .
The first real sign of change , The Beam – £ 20m and 60,000 sq ft of high-spec , ultra-modern office space over six storeys – was completed in January 2020 but for a while stood alone and isolated , a diamond in the rough .
Work has continued at pace though since the announcement by Legal & General in November 2019 that they would spend £ 100m on the site , developing the new County Hall building and two giant commercial buildings which between them will deliver 200,000 sq ft of Grade A office space for businesses .
The siting of Sunderland City Council ’ s new home there was serendipitous .
At a time when the council began seriously exploring options for a new home , the undeveloped space of the Riverside site invitingly offered itself up .
County Hall will always be a destination site and its return to the heart of the city will bring life and business into its heart in a way that the old Town Hall in Fawcett Street once did .
It is due for completion this autumn and the two new five and six-storey office blocks , which will sit behind County Hall with views over the river and out into the North Sea , are scheduled for completion in the summer of 2022 .
The vision for the urban quarter also involves the creation of 1,000 new houses and the first 132 homes are on course to be completed by 2023 , in time for the Sunderland Future Living Expo , a major public event that will showcase to the world a new way of city living .
Complementing the theme of sustainability will be a new 650-space car park due to be built in Farringdon Row with green walls covered in plants offering a visually soothing and carbonsapping contribution .
At the drawing board stage of the Riverside Sunderland development , many were left underwhelmed by the idea of mixed office / housing development on the site .
But what was perhaps overlooked was the amount of urban regeneration it would bring , with an extra 2,500 people living on-site and 10,000 jobs created .
When people live and work in a place – in good jobs , good housing - they spend money , they want places to eat , to shop , to be entertained and the local economy generates its own momentum .
It will be more than just jobs and housing though . Millions will be spent transforming this area into a green oasis and as well as plans for sculpture , artwork and green spaces , the newly-submitted plans to spend £ 4.5m on Galley ’ s Gill , the Gill Bridge and Riverside Park will create an environmental jewel in the crown .
Those plans will ensure that the green apron on the edge of the Wear becomes a magnet for visitors , fully linking up with Riverside Sunderland and offering cliff-top walks , panoramic views and even digital interaction .
From there you will be able to look over towards the Stadium of Light and ponder on the fact that coming late to the party is not necessarily a disadvantage in the long run .
When the new football ground was eventually built , its design benefited from being able to analyse everything that was good and bad about the rival stadiums built before it .
The same advantage applies to Riverside Sunderland , which is benefiting from being developed in an era when sustainability and environmental attractiveness have suddenly rushed to the forefront of construction and design .
Legal & General have become masters in developing similar sites across the country in recent years and Sunderland will benefit from the lessons the developers have learned on that journey .
When the Riverside is completed and linked up with the planned new bridge across the Wear to the stadium on one side and Keel Square on the other , a vibrant new urban and cultural quarter that any city in the world would be proud of will have emerged .
The days of own goals may be over as a bright new Sunderland finally beckons .
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