High Street plan downsizes to speed up project
BBCA £13m regeneration of a high street is to be downsized to help speed up its progress, a council has confirmed.
Plans to revitalise Gateshead High Street South began in 2019, but it became the subject of delays and controversy following the Covid-19 pandemic and budget changes.
Most of the buildings, which are due to be regenerated to bring people back to the town centre, have remained empty. The plans had included 700 new homes.
Bosses at Labour-led Gateshead Council are due to sign off a "revised" boundary after acquiring nine properties within the new site.
The plan aims to bring people back to the town centre by building a mix of multiple new commercial venues, as well as new homes.
Following delays, it was subject to criticism by opposition councillors, who last year said the project was moving "at a snail's pace".
Gateshead CouncilCouncil leader Martin Gannon said: "It is about wanting to get on and do this, that's the issue. There have been comments in the past.
"But we have had to go through a long and laborious process of acquiring properties.
"We have concluded a number of these discussions, we have acquired the majority."
'Getting started'
After acquiring nine properties, the local authority said it was negotiating with seven other property owners, while 14 properties remain in place.
The council added that compulsory purchase powers would be a last resort.
While the project was paused in 2020, it was designated as a "delayed project" with a budget of £1.7m over three years.
In February 2022, following a post-Covid review into the council's funds, a new project budget of £13m was approved to obtain property on High Street South.
Council documents claimed the new shrunken scale of the project would provide "the best use of council capital funding", according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
"To get progress and move at pace it is not massively reduced but it is concentrated on getting that redevelopment started," Gannon said.
"The rest of the site will be, I am sure, once the newly designated redevelopment site is completed and development plans and developers are approved and in place that the rest of the site will be viable."
As for the previously included part of the regeneration scheme, documents said: "For present purposes they are no longer proposed to be acquired by the council whether by agreement or by the use of compulsory purchase powers."