City centre fly-through racks up thousands of views

A FLY-THROUGH video that shows outline proposals to regenerate two key Swansea city centre sites has now been seen over 11,000 times across the world.

The video, uploaded to YouTube in early February, has been watched throughout the UK, as well as in the USA, Australia, Germany, Poland and Dubai.

Swansea Council is earmarking a retail and leisure destination for the St David’s site that could include shops, restaurants, a public square, a cinema and a new office development. On the current LC car park site, a multi-storey car park is being considered that would include opportunities for commercial development.

Outline proposals for the Civic Centre site, which has been recommended as the number one site of Welsh national priority status in a report produced for the Swansea Bay City Region board, include landmark tourist developments and high quality public spaces. Swansea University is also exploring the potential for a hydro hub research and development facility on the site that could include an aquarium.

Each of the shortlisted bidders is also being asked how they’d best go about innovatively linking the Civic Centre and St David’s sites.

Cllr Robert Francis-Davies, Swansea Council’s Cabinet Member for Enterprise, Development and Regeneration, said: “The amount of times our fly-through video has been seen in the last four months shows the level of interest in our ambitious outline proposals for these two key development sites. Their marketing has combined with a number of other recent announcements to generate a buzz in Swansea that we’re determined to capitalise on. Swansea really is going places as an investment-friendly city of innovation.

“The next stage is to appoint one or more development partners who can best realise our vision and deliver regeneration that will build on Swansea’s strengths and create a city centre that the people of Swansea deserve. In-depth discussions with representatives of each of the bids we’ve shortlisted are on-going as we look to appoint by the end of the year.”

Bids from Bellerophon, who are heading up a consortium bid including M&G (Prudential), Dawnus Construction and SSE & Apollo (IMAX), are among those being considered. Other shortlisted bidders include Queensberry Real Estate, Rightacre/Exemplar, Rivington Land and Acme, and Trebor Developments.