By Martin Walker
The date for the third phase of Newton Aycliffe’s award-winning town centre redevelopment has been revealed.
The Freshwater Group, owners of Aycliffe Town Centre, has confirmed Churchill House and adjoining shops – excluding the town clock – will be demolished in March.
It has also been revealed that Durham County Council will carry out further improvement works to the leisure centre.
The works were due to start in the summer, but suffered delays due to wranglings with utility companies.
However, they are now expected to go ahead in the Spring.
The former HSBC bank is currently being renovated and new residents are expected to move in soon – we understand Greggs is relocating there from its current small unit – while flats above the old HSBC will be redeveloped for residential use.
Meanwhile, the former Woolworths, Boola and G8vibes stores will be combined into one large retail unit for a potential let currently under discussion.
Other improvements will include new signage (pictured below) as well as an open gateway at the Churchill House end of the town which will open the town from Stephenson Way.
The centre has changed dramatically over the last four years, with shops including Aldi and Wilko coming to the town.
Its progress was marked earlier this month when Aycliffe won a gold award at the British Council of Shopping Centres annual awards dinner in London.
Town Centre manager Bryan Haldane said: “All of these works are continuing to build upon the British Council of Shopping Centre’s comments that Newton Aycliffe is an example of an amazing small centre transformation which has been fully supported by our local MP, Phil Wilson, Durham County Council, and Great Aycliffe Town Council.”
1 Comment
Darren Rhodes
December 31, 2014 at 8:47 amAs a Newtonian resident moving into the town in 2011 I have seen a significant change to the look of the town centre. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it deserved a Gold Award though, there are still many things that aren’t quite right.
Firstly, the lack of affordable start up retail business premises is forcing budding entrepreneur to the business park where accessibility and foot fall is mainly restricted to those in cars and whose signage is almost non-existent. For some reason Freshwater appear to be pricing out the potential for high quality local businesses to setup shop in Newton Aycliffe town centre.
Next, it was only after the introduction of the Aldi car park (which admittedly is a private use car park for their customers) that there has been an increase in visitors to the shopping centre. The dilapitated multi storey is gloomy and uninviting.
Finally, with the talk of developing an out of town style retail park on the business park growing popular shouldn’t Freshwater be looking to attract major retail names (Next, M&S, Holland & Barrett, WH Smith etc) instead of conceding our town centre to the usual mix of budget shops (Greggs, Wilkinsons, Poundstretcher).
We are in an improving economy, and major retail names in a town centre is a sign of increased affluence, higher wages, more jobs for townsfolk and attracts visitors from neighbouring areas (West Auckland Retail Park is a great local example of this). If Newton Aycliffe is to move forward into the 2020s as a reverred town then the seeds need to be planted in 2015, lets hope Freshwater make the right decision and don’t consign the town into insignificance like we are seeing in other towns such as Bishop Auckland, Spennymoor and Shildon