Vaux site......

Osklen said:
I’m not sure what you mean by seeing this from Tyneside centric view? But to answer that they could have built it over two storeys but they haven’t. There must be still 300,000 sq ft plus still to go at on Vaux site alone.

I agree that we need as much commercial office development in the city centre as possible and would love to see many of the peripheral business relocated in the city centre. However I would you have to be realistic in how much office space is likely to come. 600,000 sq ft (original masterplan) is quite an amount as a start from an office base in the city of pretty much 0. There is also still loads of development land to got at as I’ve mentioned before.
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Well I'm under the opinion the vaux site is key to the city centre and really should have the most ambitious project as possible. Tesco were resisted from buildings on the vaux site which was the right thing to do, given their location at the wheatsheaf shows it was the correct decision in hindsight. The original ambition for the vaux site was for a business quarter, something that's distinctly lacking anywhere in the city centre.....something never been done in the city centre.
All that work to resist Tesco has just achieved the relocation of the civic. Which is the admission of failure to use the site for commerce. Really what needs to happen is the potential on the rest of the site needs to be preserved till investment that achieves a step-change in Sunderland can be attracted.
 


citybythesea said:
Well I'm under the opinion the vaux site is key to the city centre and really should have the most ambitious project as possible. Tesco were resisted from buildings on the vaux site which was the right thing to do, given their location at the wheatsheaf shows it was the correct decision in hindsight. The original ambition for the vaux site was for a business quarter, something that's distinctly lacking anywhere in the city centre.....something never been done in the city centre.
All that work to resist Tesco has just achieved the relocation of the civic. Which is the admission of failure to use the site for commerce. Really what needs to happen is the potential on the rest of the site needs to be preserved till investment that achieves a step-change in Sunderland can be attracted.
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I understand your point but what I would say is that it can still become a business quarter. There is a question mark over the quantum of office development, I agree, but it’s difficult to know exactly how much will come forward in the future - as that’s anyone guess.

One of the other issues of proposing buildings of significant scale - say 10 plus storeys is that some investors may be landowner and tenant and thus they will build a building of scale that meets their needs and not one that matches say your ambition or the masterplan. For instance they may only require 60,000 sq ft therefore only build 3 to 4 storeys in height.

Would you then stop them from building on the Vaux site and potentially lose their business from the city centre to other areas? It’s a really difficult dilemma to have, granted a hypothetical one but could be a very real scenario.

As with all property deals it’s all about risk and confidence, and unfortunately I would guess that the Vaux site for a developer is full of risk and not a lot of market confidence.
 
Osklen said:
I understand your point but what I would say is that it can still become a business quarter. There is a question mark over the quantum of office development, I agree, but it’s difficult to know exactly how much will come forward in the future - as that’s anyone guess.

One of the other issues of proposing buildings of significant scale - say 10 plus storeys is that some investors may be landowner and tenant and thus they will build a building of scale that meets their needs and not one that matches say your ambition or the masterplan. For instance they may only require 60,000 sq ft therefore only build 3 to 4 storeys in height.

Would you then stop them from building on the Vaux site and potentially lose their business from the city centre to other areas? It’s a really difficult dilemma to have, granted a hypothetical one but could be a very real scenario.

As with all property deals it’s all about risk and confidence, and unfortunately I would guess that the Vaux site for a developer is full of risk and not a lot of market confidence.
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No, not at all but I would say many office buildings have multiple tenants in the same building rather than a dedicated building to one business.
 
42 said:
Part of the vaux was originally allocated for residential. If you move that residential to the old civic site & replace with commercial than you havent lost any commercial.

Theres also the argument that had they not moved to vaux then the redevelopment wouldve taken a lot longer, and this speeds things up which also means the surrounding areas (HSW, crowtree etc) improve earlier which brings in more investment earlier.

Theres loads of ways of looking at this as things arent that simple. Theres no right or wrong answer.
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Surely an option should be to have residential built above the offices.
 
citybythesea said:
No, not at all but I would say many office buildings have multiple tenants in the same building rather than a dedicated building to one business.
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Of course I guess what I was saying is that a masterplan is purely an outline guide of what something could look like, with the reality being it could be radically different due to individual developer / tenants needs.
royaldragon said:
Surely an option should be to have residential built above the offices.
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Certainly an option however main issue is viability of apartments in Sunderland. Not sure how well apartments would sell in Sunderland based on the likes of echo 24, Mowbray Gardens (?), Post Office etc...Sunderland is still very much suburbanised.
 
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Osklen said:
Certainly an option however main issue is viability of apartments in Sunderland. Not sure how well apartments would sell in Sunderland based on the likes of echo 24, Mowbray Gardens (?), Post Office etc...Sunderland is still very much suburbanised.
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If the council/Gentoo got involved with some of the apartments above the offices surely that's an option, after all the Town Centre flats are really popular, there used to be a waiting list to get a flat there, I'd imagine most of them are now privately owned so there might not be many left for rent through the council/Gentoo.
 
royaldragon said:
If the council/Gentoo got involved with some of the apartments above the offices surely that's an option, after all the Town Centre flats are really popular, there used to be a waiting list to get a flat there, I'd imagine most of them are now privately owned so there might not be many left for rent through the council/Gentoo.
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It sounds bad but there would be a question mark over providing social housing above commercial office space. Not sure how tenants would react. The private rental sector for that sort of housing isn’t quite there in Sunderland, with Newcastle only just getting this investment (even Newcastle is some way behind the likes of Manchester and Leeds).

I can understand private sales, albeit im not sure you’d get the values for them.

It’s ideally the way you’d go but not sure the Sunderland mark could sustain it. It’s too easy and cheap to buy terraced and semi detach houses within the city and not enough in the city centre to attract people to live there.

Just to add that this is only my opinion of course. Nothing to stop developers doing it but Echo 24 will scare a few people.
 
citybythesea said:
Well I'm under the opinion the vaux site is key to the city centre and really should have the most ambitious project as possible. Tesco were resisted from buildings on the vaux site which was the right thing to do, given their location at the wheatsheaf shows it was the correct decision in hindsight. The original ambition for the vaux site was for a business quarter, something that's distinctly lacking anywhere in the city centre.....something never been done in the city centre.
All that work to resist Tesco has just achieved the relocation of the civic. Which is the admission of failure to use the site for commerce. Really what needs to happen is the potential on the rest of the site needs to be preserved till investment that achieves a step-change in Sunderland can be attracted.
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This could be seen as an admission of failure but in reality the Civic Centre has out lived it's purpose; councils are very different beasts than what they were. I would rather the council moved to the Vaux site than say Doxford Park or Rainton. Durham Council are doing something similar and moving to the site next to swimming baths in Durham for the same reasons as Sunderland Council are moving for. What I am hoping is that the council will give the Vaux site critical mass and more businesses will be attracted to the area. Hopefully, we gain a new footbridge over the river and that will perhaps open up the Sheepfolds as a Vaux-2 once the main Vaux site is totally occupied. Only time will tell but are least we don't have a giant Tescos on Vaux and a derelict Wheatsheaf. It has taken a long time but slowly the Vaux site is getting there.
 
mackem35 said:
This could be seen as an admission of failure but in reality the Civic Centre has out lived it's purpose; councils are very different beasts than what they were. I would rather the council moved to the Vaux site than say Doxford Park or Rainton. Durham Council are doing something similar and moving to the site next to swimming baths in Durham for the same reasons as Sunderland Council are moving for. What I am hoping is that the council will give the Vaux site critical mass and more businesses will be attracted to the area. Hopefully, we gain a new footbridge over the river and that will perhaps open up the Sheepfolds as a Vaux-2 once the main Vaux site is totally occupied. Only time will tell but are least we don't have a giant Tescos on Vaux and a derelict Wheatsheaf. It has taken a long time but slowly the Vaux site is getting there.
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Yes makes sense. Moving good numbers of relitively well paid jobs into city centres to kick start regeneration.

The same would have happened in Northumberland too to regenerate Ashington. However the tories lies and blind hatred of former coalfield areas kicked in and stopped it.
 
Bakerlooline said:
Nothing, why? Well, nothing significant, there are new utilities going in, including sewers but no development of that site as the MOJ development is still on hold.
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Had noticed work being done there I see Riverside Sunderland's web page are saying Farrington Row is earmarked for family housing.
 

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