Tees Business Issue 31 | Page 17

Demolition of shopping centre and hotel begins
NEWS

BUSINESS BITES

First spades - Project supporters attend the Clean Energy Hub ground-breaking ceremony .

WORK STARTS ON £ 3.2M CLEAN ENERGY HUB

Construction of Redcar and Cleveland College ’ s Clean Energy Education Hub is underway in a move to help prepare people for future green jobs coming to the Tees region .

First spades in the ground on the site on Corporation Road marked the development of the £ 3.2m facility , which will deliver the skills needed by employers in the clean energy and renewable sector .
Primarily funded by the Town Deal Fund , the hub will provide a practical learning environment that simulates real workspaces to service domestic and industrial markets .
The college is working with the Redcar Town Deal Board , Redcar and Cleveland Council , the combined authority and industry leaders to ensure the hub is positioned to support the area ’ s emerging green economy .
Contractor Britcon has been appointed to
The demolition of a major Tees shopping centre and hotel has started .
Structures which make up the Castlegate Shopping Centre and the Swallow Hotel are now being bulldozed as part of Stockton Council ’ s plans to transform the town centre and connect the high street to the river .
The buildings are being demolished to make way for Stockton Waterfront , a bold urban park and land bridge structure that will allow people to walk uninterrupted from the town to the riverside .
It will also be home to new leisure , health and community facilities on the southern end of the site .
This will include a new leisure centre , library , NHS facility and customer service centre .
Demolition is now underway , with the excavator beginning to dismantle the 1970s buildings piece by piece , through two phases .
The multi-storey car park will be demolished first , followed by part of the
deliver the project , a 1,000 sq m new build that will link to the college ’ s existing building with its own access route . Doors are due to open to its first learners next January .
With additional investment from the Education Training Collective and the Skills Development Fund , the hub will deliver training to school leavers and adult learners , as well as offering higher education , commercial , professional and bespoke employer-led programmes .
The project has been further boosted by the commitment of a donation from BP to bring community engagement and further development to the hub .
The company has announced plans for three projects in the region – HyGreen Teesside , which will utilise green hydrogen , H2Teesside , which will produce blue hydrogen , and first-of-a-kind gas-fired power and carbon capture project NZT Power .

Demolition of shopping centre and hotel begins

Demolition – the bulldozers have started work on the Castlegate Shopping Centre and the Swallow Hotel in Stockton .
Swallow Hotel and the most southern section of the shopping centre , before moving north through the rest of the centre .
The demolition will take around 12 months to complete and , once completed , work will start on the construction and redevelopment of the urban park in summer 2023 , with the waterfront development set to be complete by 2025 .
LEVELLING UP BIDS Redcar and Cleveland Council has submitted two bids totalling nearly £ 40m to the next round of the government ’ s levelling up fund .
The bids cover projects in the Redcar , South Middlesbrough and East Cleveland areas .
A decision on whether the bids have been successful is expected to be made by the government in the autumn .
GREEN STEELMAKING Hydrogen pipeline systems are being installed at the Materials Processing Institute as the initial £ 270,000 phase of a multi-million project to demonstrate UK innovation in green steelmaking .
Commercial Maintenance Services UK is currently installing the infrastructure as part of the development of a proposed permanent national pilot distribution and production facility at the Institute ’ s Teesside campus .
INNOVATIVE RESEARCH Researchers from Teesside University are working with international partners to implement innovative machine learning techniques to detect leaks during underground carbon dioxide sequestration .
The international research partnership could help reduce the environmental and economic impact of leaks from gas transportation pipelines and underground carbon dioxide sequestration by using artificial intelligence and machine learning .
APPRENTICESHIP ACCOLADE Middlesbrough-based engineering company Intelect is celebrating after ranking in the Apprenticeships Top 50 SME Employers for 2022 .
The Top 50 SME Apprenticeship Employers list celebrates small-to-medium enterprises for their vital contribution and commitments to apprenticeships , with Intelect taking spot number 17 , positioning them as one of the highest-ranking companies in the Tees Valley .
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