Swansea's £500m city centre regeneration gets go-ahead

A £500m regeneration of Swansea’s city centre looks set to proceed after being given the green light by councillors.  The city’s planning committee gave the go-ahead to redevelop the 11 ha site, which includes the St David’s shopping centre in the city centre.

The 11-storey building will have 1 million sq ft of space and will be combined with the current Google building at 6 Pancras Square and an additional third building to create a Google campus which could house 7,000 Google employees.

The outline application includes plans over two sections of the site, with the northern part of the scheme comprising more than 900,000 sq ft of retail, office and commercial space.  It will also include up to 208 new homes and 210,000 sq ft of parking facilities, while the height of the buildings on the site is capped at no more than seven storeys.  Plans for the southern part of the site feature a new 6,000-seat 113,000 sq ft arena, a 13-storey hotel or residential building, and food and drink outlets covering nearly 440,000 sq ft.

Plans will see extensive public realm and infrastructure improvements across the whole site, including a pedestrian bridge link and new bus stops on the A4607.

All the existing buildings on the site, aside from two listed buildings – St Mary’s Church and St David’s Church – will be demolished to make way for the project. Earlier this year, a £1.3bn city deal for the Swansea Bay region was signed off by the government, paving the way for further investment in the city.

The Swansea Bay city deal will see the UK and Welsh governments pledge a total of £241m in funding, with another £396m of public funds and £637m of private sector cash spent over 15 years on projects across four councils.

Source: Construction News

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