Final city centre bids being submitted next week

REGENERATION experts competing to transform two Swansea city centre sites will submit their final bids next week.

Each company on the shortlist to redevelop the Civic Centre and St David’s sites has until Tuesday September 15 to hand in their final plans, technical drawings and financial proposals.

Swansea Council and their property advisers, Cushman and Wakefield, will then comprehensively assess each of the bids before a report is prepared for Cabinet’s approval in November that will recommend the appointment of one or more development partners.

The final bids will include a submission from Bellerophon, who are heading up a consortium bid including M&G (Prudential), Dawnus Construction and SSE & Apollo (IMAX). Bids from Queensberry Real Estate, Rightacre, Rivington Land and Acme, and Trebor Developments will also be considered.

A mixed-use development is being proposed for the St David’s site that could include retail, leisure and office space. 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.

Developers will also be letting the council know how they’d best go about innovatively linking both sites.

Cllr Robert Francis-Davies, Cabinet Member for Enterprise, Development and Regeneration, said: “The final bids due to be submitted next week are confidential at this stage, but the public can rest assured that we’ll start sharing details once the appointment of one or more development partners has been approved later this year. We realise the people of Swansea have waited far too long for the kind of bustling city centre they deserve, which is why our focus isn’t just on getting it right – it’s also on speedy delivery. The rapid progress we’ve made since first marketing the two sites earlier this year shows how serious we are about this commitment.

“The planned regeneration of the Civic Centre and St David’s sites is hugely exciting. It’ll lead to a combination of shops, offices, restaurants, leisure activities and top quality public spaces that will attract more people into the city centre and spark further investment in future.

“Recent figures show sales and footfall are both on the rise in the city centre compared with last year, so the redevelopment of these two key sites will build on some of the fantastic work being done by our city centre traders and organisations like the Swansea Business Improvement District.”

July’s sales in the city centre were up 2% from the same month last year, beating the national statistic by 0.8%. These figures come in the wake of a similarly successful June, where sales were up 4.5% from the same month in 2014.

The figures for July also show footfall in Swansea city centre was up 3.5% on the same month last year, bucking the national trend where footfall was down 2.2%.

Some of the businesses to have recently committed to the city centre in the near future include burger restaurant Five Guys and Kaspas desserts.