PLANS for a three block, mixed-use development in the centre of Sunderland have been re-submitted this week with some minor changes by Belfast developer Vico Properties. The City Green project will be significant for establishing a new high in office rents for Sunderland at £16.50 per sq ft. The whole development will include 58 apartments, 56 sheltered housing units, around 40,000sq ft of office space, and a ground floor restaurant/bar. Vico says the changes are merely altering the internal layout of the accommodation. City Green will be built on the site of the University of Sunderland’s Benedict Building, with the site running from St George’s Way through to Cowan Terrace – next to the Park Lane bus and Metro interchange. The scheme is unusual in bringing speculative development to Sunderland, when up to now any new office requirements have been secured in the subsidised areas of Doxford Park and Hylton Riverside. The new application for City Green comes just a week after Sunderland Arc submitted its plans for Farringdon Row on the western edge of the city centre. That will involve 70,000sq ft of offices, a three star hotel, 124 apartments and 3,600sq ft of retail space. However, office developers on Wearside have generally been frustrated at the pace of change in the city with much depending on the resolution of the long running battle between the Arc and Tesco for the Vaux site which is expected to eventually provide around 300,000sq ft of office space, amongst other uses. |