Sunniside Up...It's the new Notting Hill of the North

The Sunniside area of Sunderland is going ‘back to the future’, regaining a once proud reputation as a fashionable place to live and work, thanks to a sensitive regeneration programme supported by One NorthEast.

It’s an astonishing fact that there are 160 listed buildings in Sunniside, an area to the east of Sunderland’s current city centre which has in recent years not had the greatest of reputations.

In fact, Sunniside was once THE place to live in Sunderland but it never really recovered from devastating bombing raids in World War II. In the intervening years it has suffered from a mixture of inappropriate development, under investment, the migration of indigenous businesses to other parts of the city and loss of residents.

Today, however, its elegant Victorian and Georgian streets are once again beginning to bustle. Since 2003, a £130m regeneration project has been breathing new life into Sunniside and it is fast becoming the cultural hub of the city once more.

1,000 new homes are planned for the area – which covers some 43 acres – a derelict public space Sunniside Gardens has been revamped and ‘thePlace’, a combined arts and business centre, is taking shape. Many other buildings have already taken on a new lease of life.

Spearheading the 12-year project is the Sunniside Partnership, with support from Sunderland City Council, Sunderland arc, One NorthEast, English Partnerships, and the TyneWear Partnership.

Based at offices in High Street West, in Sunniside, Partnership Director Ben Hall said: “It was felt that by embedding a distinct project office within the area we could liase with local businesses to identify the issues and stay close to local communities. It’s a strategy that is working well.”

The vision is for a new and vibrant quarter of the city with a popular restaurant, café and bar sector and a specialist retail area that, as well as being a drive-to destination for people from outside of the area, is supported by an expanded residential community and a ‘creative’ business sector, made up mainly of companies working in traditional design, new media design, the financial and legal sectors.

The regeneration project itself is unique and reminiscent of another highly successful North East scheme – Grainger Town in Newcastle.

Ben, a professional project manager who was with construction consultancy Turner & Townsend and then Sunderland arc before taking over at Sunniside, said: “Regeneration is mostly associated with large brownfield development sites, whereas in Sunniside it was felt that a more fine-grained approach was needed.

“Grainger Town’s Living above the Shop comes closest to what we are doing but our model of a sustainable mixed development project is specifically designed to bring Sunniside back to life.”

While some £7m of public funding has already been spent in Sunniside, the project has also attracted over £40m of private sector money – so far.

“The original target over 12 years was £120m from the private sector but we’ve managed to attract one third of that after just three years or a quarter of the time scale, so we are well ahead of schedule,” said Ben.

As confidence in the area has returned, so have the investors. The size of the public sector funding and the embedded Partnership, have sent out a clear signal that the project is going to succeed.

Assisted by commercial property grants of up to £60,000, owners and developers are improving properties and businesses are moving in, creating a new buzz about Sunniside.

It is crucial, however, that they buy into the overall planning framework which will
See Sunniside offer housing, office accommodation and a retail environment that complement other developments taking place in other areas of Sunderland.

“There is a lack of good quality office space in the city and while the arc is addressing the large floor plan office, we can offer the smaller spaces needed by a different type of smaller business,” said Ben.

“Through the grants we can persuade developers who may, for instance, have purely residential plans that the ground floor should be made available as business premises. This means we can get the balance right.”

Ben Hall can be contacted on 0191 567 4822 e-mail ben@sunnisidepartnership.co.uk