Member Article

Go-ahead for Chester's Northgate scheme

Cheshire West and Chester Council has given the green light to plans for the £300m Northgate Scheme to transform retail and leisure in the historic city centre.

Members agreed to approve the procurement of a development and design team and the finance to get concept plans to the planning application stage by spring 2015.

A report from specialist consumer and retail research company CACI warned that in terms of cash spend per head of the population, the city had dropped from 27th out of 4,000 retail centres in 2006 to 59th in 2012.

With an expected 7.3% share of a £4,113m expenditure market, it falls into third place behind Liverpool City Centre (11.5%) and Cheshire Oaks (8%), in a catchment area of two million people.

Cllr Les Ford, executive member for resources, said: “The evidence is clear – ‘develop or decline’. We have no alternative.”

The Northgate development is part of the wider One City Plan which will contribute to a reinvigorated city centre as part of a co-ordinated delivery strategy.

The site, alongside Chester Town Hall and next to the proposed new theatre and library, is reserved for significant new retail development, along with leisure uses and a new market.

Northgate’s objective is to rejuvenate the entire quarter through careful planning, design and architecture, bringing vibrancy and vitality to the area.

Critical to the future economic success of Chester, this will create around 1,600 permanent jobs, plus construction posts; an annual increased spend of £143m and additional rates of around £8m.

The scheme includes:

A leisure square with a market and a 8-screen cinema, complementing the 120-seat cinema,

375,240 sq.ft of retail floor space – including an anchor department store – 51 standard unit stores; 2 kiosks and 5 Major Store Units; a small food store of 6,555 sq.ft and 79,233 sq.ft of food and beverage units,

Extra parking - both underground and in a multi storey car park, providing 954 spaces in total,

and a new bus facility at Gorse Stacks, subject to public consultation.

Chester Cllr Samantha Dixon, a member of the all-party Northgate Working Group, said: “Chester is the retail engine that needs to carry the rest of the borough. It should be performing strongly, bringing jobs and money into the borough and contributing to increase revenue.

“If it doesn’t if this decline continues, then the consequences affect the whole of the borough. We need to invest in Chester to help keep the borough going.”

Opposition leader Cllr Justin Madders highlighted his concerns about public transport penetration and felt it right that the emerging Chester transport strategy fed into the process and contributed to an informed decision about what is best for this scheme.

“I think we also need to consider in far more detail what kind of market we want to see in the new scheme. There is no doubt at the moment that the market is struggling at the time of great difficulty for retail generally.

“I think that we need to encourage dialogue with the market traders now in order to support them and get through to 2019.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .