Business Cases / Public Sector Funding

Estate Regeneration - Residential

Heritage & Listed Buildings

Valuation

North Tyneside Council

Background

We acted for North Tyneside Council to prepare the detailed development appraisals required for their Heritage Enterprise Round 2 submission to HLF.

  The Spanish City site at Whitley Bay is one of North Tyneside’s most famous landmarks. The project was to complete the full restoration of the building, bringing it back into use for leisure, tourism and commercial uses. The revitalised site now provides over 2,100 sqm of new business space, to include retail units, catering facilities and enterprise space. The centre piece of this exciting restoration project was the dome experience - a unique shared space delivering a wide range of events, exhibitions and activities. The Spanish City dome was revolutionary, beautiful and breath-taking, symbolising everything that a visit to Whitley Bay meant to generations of holiday makers. In this space the project creates memorable, interactive and engaging family experience, bringing the thrills, fun and beauty of Spanish City’s past to a 21st Century audience in a year-round visitor destination.

The Challenge

The challenge was to identify and appraise the various options for the site including Council led restoration; partnership with specialist leisure operators; and/or enabling development on the adjacent land.

 Our role was to work alongside the architect, engineers, cost consultants and the Council’s ‘events’ team to capitalise the revenue business plan and prepare a bespoke cashflow appraisal to demonstrate the conservation deficit to the HLF.

In addition, we added significant value by completing an options appraisal report to analyse the minimum grant required for various scheme design changes and value engineering including extension ‘wings’ and lightweight glazed reception to the original dome structure.  We advised the Council on commercial structures to contract with an operator before finalising the development appraisal report and options appraisal for the HLF.

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