Vacant buildings with the best potential

riffraff said:
Been saying summet vaguely along those lines for years. There’s the hotel rooms for this stuff now and once this new place by the fire station opens up.

“Why isn’t there a Sunderland ____________* Festival?” *Insert the cultural pursuit of your choice:

Film: Horror Fillum? Crime Fillum? Comedy Fillum? Music Fillum? Sports Fillum? etc etc
Music: Jazz? Soul? Punk? Ska? Reggae? C&W? Americana? etc etc
Theatre? Youth Theatre? New plays? Etc etc.

Who dares wins.
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We do have “The Sunderland Shorts Film Festival” which hopefully will be a regular thing once allowed again.
 


Slightly off topic i know but with a great green space that we have in Herrington country park ,why do we not have a farmers market in the better months of the year .
 
sheddweller said:
Slightly off topic i know but with a great green space that we have in Herrington country park ,why do we not have a farmers market in the better months of the year .
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On a similar theme, there is a huge wasted resource at Fulwell Quarry. Two massive bowls created from the landfill that were for sports but now abandoned.
Like two smaller Milton Keynes bowls, they would be perfect for music festivals/events.
Currently only used by scroats on scrambler bikes or dogs shitting.
 
Well this is going to be controversial but I think in retrospect the worst thing the council have done in the last 20 years was oppose the Tesco development. At the time everyone was worried about a big uninspired glass building and that's exactly what we ended up with anyway. The council were pushing out these pie in the sky planning ideas of skyscrapers, undercover outdoor event spaces and a bridges style expansion with hundreds of houses and a new bridge - non of it was ever realistic and was just a PR con to get the population on side. Part of the opposition was that it would kill off local business - well it's not exactly been thriving for the last 10 years has it. If we had allowed the development then people may have done their food shopping and then popped into town and supported other businesses. We also wouldn't have had 20 years of wasted space.
 
Binternet said:
Well this is going to be controversial but I think in retrospect the worst thing the council have done in the last 20 years was oppose the Tesco development. At the time everyone was worried about a big uninspired glass building and that's exactly what we ended up with anyway. The council were pushing out these pie in the sky planning ideas of skyscrapers, undercover outdoor event spaces and a bridges style expansion with hundreds of houses and a new bridge - non of it was ever realistic and was just a PR con to get the population on side. Part of the opposition was that it would kill off local business - well it's not exactly been thriving for the last 10 years has it. If we had allowed the development then people may have done their food shopping and then popped into town and supported other businesses. We also wouldn't have had 20 years of wasted space.
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I get that argument my concern would be of heaving a Gateshead style development which may look pretty poor in years to come. I can’t recall exactly the Tesco proposal but I think we would now be looking at it much like we do with Morrison’s at Seaburn. Just my opinion of course.

I think event the Tesco proposal proposed high rise apartments which oversailed the cliff edge and may have even included a tunnel under st Mary’s boulevard.
 
Binternet said:
Well this is going to be controversial but I think in retrospect the worst thing the council have done in the last 20 years was oppose the Tesco development. At the time everyone was worried about a big uninspired glass building and that's exactly what we ended up with anyway. The council were pushing out these pie in the sky planning ideas of skyscrapers, undercover outdoor event spaces and a bridges style expansion with hundreds of houses and a new bridge - non of it was ever realistic and was just a PR con to get the population on side. Part of the opposition was that it would kill off local business - well it's not exactly been thriving for the last 10 years has it. If we had allowed the development then people may have done their food shopping and then popped into town and supported other businesses. We also wouldn't have had 20 years of wasted space.
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Sorry, I don’t agree with this at all. The proposal by Tesco would have sucked even more life out of the town, with maybe an exception to a few pubs in the immediate vicinity.
The Vaux site is really prime land. It has river views, a good acreage and right next to an existing town centre. Any council worth their salt would not develop this as single vendor retail.
 
Wearson said:
We do have “The Sunderland Shorts Film Festival” which hopefully will be a regular thing once allowed again.
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Do we? Good. Has it ever been publicised?
Binternet said:
Well this is going to be controversial but I think in retrospect the worst thing the council have done in the last 20 years was oppose the Tesco development. At the time everyone was worried about a big uninspired glass building and that's exactly what we ended up with anyway. The council were pushing out these pie in the sky planning ideas of skyscrapers, undercover outdoor event spaces and a bridges style expansion with hundreds of houses and a new bridge - non of it was ever realistic and was just a PR con to get the population on side. Part of the opposition was that it would kill off local business - well it's not exactly been thriving for the last 10 years has it. If we had allowed the development then people may have done their food shopping and then popped into town and supported other businesses. We also wouldn't have had 20 years of wasted space.
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Errrrrh every town centre in the country has “not exactly been thriving for the last ten years“. Stop wuming ffs.
 
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FalkirkMackem said:
Wonder why it died out? Great location and building.
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Only went in a couple of times, bought our pints went upstairs, sat down on some sofas and a bouncer came around 10 minutes shouting and ranting that this floor was shutting and everybody should lead 'now' it was only about 21:00, chocker downstairs and we couldn't find a space to all stand together. The second time we went to watch the match, it was packed couldn't get served, about 6 staff on & nobody clearing the empty glasses away or washing them and they ran out - I was asked if I could find some glasses there must have been about 4 or 5 dozen piled up on the bar.
 
riffraff said:
Do we? Good. Has it ever been publicised?

Errrrrh every town centre in the country has “not exactly been thriving for the last ten years“. Stop wuming ffs.
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Quite a few town centres around the country have been thriving before Covid - partially because they haven't sat on huge swathes of empty land for 20 years and developed it into something the local population will use (I accept that the legal process that took years wasn't exactly the council's fault). Other town centres which have let decay and stagnation set in have collapsed. If the council were honest with the population originally and said "we have no developer, no money and our vision is something we have constructed in a couple of days on a computer then it would have been interesting to see what public opinion would have been. The Vaux project may be a success (and I really hope it is) in the future but it will have taken an entire generation to develop and in that time we will have lost decades of productivity and income generated from that land.
 
Binternet said:
Quite a few town centres around the country have been thriving before Covid - partially because they haven't sat on huge swathes of empty land for 20 years and developed it into something the local population will use (I accept that the legal process that took years wasn't exactly the council's fault). Other town centres which have let decay and stagnation set in have collapsed. If the council were honest with the population originally and said "we have no developer, no money and our vision is something we have constructed in a couple of days on a computer then it would have been interesting to see what public opinion would have been. The Vaux project may be a success (and I really hope it is) in the future but it will have taken an entire generation to develop and in that time we will have lost decades of productivity and income generated from that land.
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Which ones?
 
riffraff said:
Which ones?
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You don't have to look far, Newcastle and York have both done well and that's because they have created and catered for their audience. Most major city, city centres were performing well at the end of the last decade with low unit vacancy rates. Old industrial towns like Sunderland are at the other end of the spectrum.
 
Wearson said:
Do you know if the one in Boldon is closing as a result?

Still got some decent men’s clothes shops in the town. There’s a plus.
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He says the Boldon shop is staying open. They are expanding the business.
New shop looks class. Casual stuff on the ground floor and all the suits, private fittings etc upstairs
 
Zimba said:
Yeah agreed tbh, be expensive to do that thoughl especially with the backlash of touching Jackie Whites won't go down well. I'm sure they've tried to shut it down before aswell.

Interesting I must admit I don't have a clue about average rent prices but the rent paid by the casino seems crazily low at £8.88 a sq ft a year especially in a city centre.
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I think the casino people threatened to close it a good while back and a deal was done
 
Binternet said:
Well this is going to be controversial but I think in retrospect the worst thing the council have done in the last 20 years was oppose the Tesco development. At the time everyone was worried about a big uninspired glass building and that's exactly what we ended up with anyway. The council were pushing out these pie in the sky planning ideas of skyscrapers, undercover outdoor event spaces and a bridges style expansion with hundreds of houses and a new bridge - non of it was ever realistic and was just a PR con to get the population on side. Part of the opposition was that it would kill off local business - well it's not exactly been thriving for the last 10 years has it. If we had allowed the development then people may have done their food shopping and then popped into town and supported other businesses. We also wouldn't have had 20 years of wasted space.
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Have you been to Gateshead? Tesco would have out competed everything else in the city centre.

If the company had subsequently suffered a downturn the whole place would die.

Daft idea.
 
Weremuthe said:
I think the casino people threatened to close it a good while back and a deal was done
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Ah would make sense then tbh. Seems unusually low otherwise.

Binternet said:
Well this is going to be controversial but I think in retrospect the worst thing the council have done in the last 20 years was oppose the Tesco development. At the time everyone was worried about a big uninspired glass building and that's exactly what we ended up with anyway. The council were pushing out these pie in the sky planning ideas of skyscrapers, undercover outdoor event spaces and a bridges style expansion with hundreds of houses and a new bridge - non of it was ever realistic and was just a PR con to get the population on side. Part of the opposition was that it would kill off local business - well it's not exactly been thriving for the last 10 years has it. If we had allowed the development then people may have done their food shopping and then popped into town and supported other businesses. We also wouldn't have had 20 years of wasted space.
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As much as getting a development there, Tesco and their developments in town centres usually do the opposite in the fact that people who used to go into the town go to Tesco instead and never touch the town centre instead rather than people popping into Tesco then into the town since there's buses direct to them from everywhere which isn't usually the case when it's out in Silksworth or Seaburn so the pensioners have no choice but to use the city. Not to mention there's already a Tesco in the centre of Sunderland which sells everything you need so you're actually moving it out of the centre as I believe the Bridges store was closing.

You also have to look at places like Alloa, Elgin, Peterlee, Ashington, Newton Aycliffe, Hexham, Redcar which all had Tesco's, Morrisons' and/or Asda's built near the centres and they're all still dying on their arse if anything for Hexham, Alloa, Redcar and Elgin it accelerated their demise.
 

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