Discover City Centre

Regeneration of the city centre to ensure it fulfils its economic potential, is acknowledged as being a top priority by the city’s stakeholders.  A number of strategies and policies (including the arc’s Business Plan) are already in place to achieve this objective.

Great progress has already been made in the Sunniside area of the city centre and with popular attractions such as The Bridges Shopping Centre and Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens. The arc 's Holmeside retail scheme will also add a crucial new dimension to the city's shopping offer.

In order to build on this sucess it is recognised that city centre regeneration initiatives must be fully integrated, co-ordinated and properly phased in order to achieve maximum effect. Hence an important part of the forthcoming Economic Masterplan will include establishing a City Centre Strategy. 

This will cover:

• Defining the economic role and potential scale of the city centre within Sunderland and the City Region.

• Assessing the centre’s retail, office, study, leisure and living potential, and their interactions.

• Establishing the shape of the city centre and the key flows within it and the locations and functions of key sites.

• A linked assessment on the role of transport in making the city centre economy more effective.

• How organisations should and could work together to drive the city centre economy.

• Developing urban design options for shaping and re-presenting the city centre as an attractive and vibrant place to work, shop, study, spend leisure time and to live.

The arc’s business plan is one of a suite of documents which will inform preparation of the City Centre Strategy.

 

City Centre Gallery