Plans On Show For £300m Development In Portsmouth

24 October 2013, 09:32 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

Plans for a £300 million shopping, leisure and housing development in Portsmouth's Northern Quarter have gone on show.

Developers Centros have unveiled their proposals for regenerating the area. The redevelopment was put on hold in 2008 because of the recession but Centros say they're now ready to submit plans to the council.

It's expected to open in 2018 and create more than a thousand jobs.

A public exhibition is being held by Centros in the city centre in a temporary facility on the Marketway car park, close to the road crossing to Sainsbury's. Representatives of Portsmouth City Council will also be on hand to explain how the proposed development would be integrated into the city centre road network.

The exhibition will be open to the public:

Thursday 24th October : 9am to 8pm
Friday 25th October : 9am to 4pm
Saturday 26th October : 9am to 4pm

The plans for a mixed-use shopping, leisure and residential development will be the subject of consultation over the next few weeks prior to an outline planning application being submitted in the new year.

The proposed development is set to transform the city centre through the introduction of a major department store, a range of shops, a leisure hub, restaurants, cafés, residential apartments and associated parking. The site for the Northern Quarter development covers the existing Marketway surface car park and stretches from Commercial Road to St Agatha's church on the northern side of The Cascades shopping centre.

The planning application to be submitted in the new year will be an 'outline' or 'parameters' application that will set out the basic principles of the proposals. These will include the maximum height of development, the site area covered, the location of new streets and the car park, the acceptable land uses and the overall floorspace.

If the planning application is approved next year then Centros will move on to the detailed design of the scheme, which will then be the subject of further public consultation and 'reserved matters' applications. If those in turn are approved, Centros anticipates that construction could start around the beginning of 2017 and the whole scheme completed by around the end of 2018.

John Marsh, director of Centros, said:

"We are delighted to present our vision for the Northern Quarter to the people of Portsmouth and will be pleased to discuss it with them at our public exhibition next week. We have been working very closely with Portsmouth City Council to ensure that our scheme will give Portsmouth the modern city centre it so richly deserves.

"By combining shopping with leisure and residential uses, the overall vibrancy of the city centre will be much enhanced. The combination of retail and leisure will extend activities into the evening and the residential elements will add to both the vitality and general feeling of security.

"Our investment in the regeneration of the Northern Quarter will bring huge benefits. Not only will it help to present Portsmouth as a dynamic, successful city embracing the future, it will generate a significant economic boost through the creation of more than a thousand new jobs and the retention of trade in Portsmouth, which would otherwise go elsewhere."