In view of the council's approval of this application by Mountview Securities for a Tesco Extra store, with car parking facilities below and several other retail units at the southern end of the site, lets hope this development gets started soon.
Initial render of Tesco store (anchor of development):
Ground Floor Plan (showing the car parking UNDERNEATH the store)
I would be too, just can't see a stand-alone facility on the site plans, and I imagine it'd be a health and safety breach to have the petrol station effectively under the store?
The kind of stuff pictured above certainly can be removed, but the large murals by Eyez on the side of Low Fell Removals must remain. In fact they should be touched up and covered with perspex.
I agree on the wood panels but also on the large glass front, which will have a lot of visual impact when lit up (which will be much of the time with the supermarket being 24 hours). Art from local schools is also planned to be incorporated which should give it an additional community touch.
All in all, so very much better than what occupied the site previously and certainly better at Roker than on the Vaux site.
I must admit to being a bit surprised by the scale of the 'sea of tarmac', but overall the impact on the area is very positive. It was very run-down previously. The loss of the old swimming pool is a shame though. It would have been a good opportunity to turn it into a bar or similar.
I've heard this idea floated a few times as though Newcastle Road Baths was some arts and crafts or art-deco masterpiece. In my view it was an eyesore with very little architectural merit, and its demolition was well overdue. Old does not always equal worth keeping. Besides, its design and layout would have made it very difficult to convert into anything, with the possible exception of a music venue, but for the location the costs would have been prohibitive. I expect a small housing estate to fill the land when the market picks up a bit.
I passed through Sunderland past Tesco tonight and got straight across no bother at 5.30pm, I agree it is a sea of tarmac but as much as I would like to say otherwise the traffic was flowing quite freely for a evening drive home!
In my experience the junction is much more efficient and free-moving than before. It bothers me not that it is a sea of tarmac. It's an urban, inner-city location flanked by tower blocks and industrial and retail units - it'd look a bit weird and forced if it had been modelled on Cleadon village green.
I wonder what effect, if any, this Tesco store will have on usage of Stadium of Light Metro station? From what I can tell there appears to be an entrance to the Tesco site from the ramp down to the station platforms. SoL is rather a quiet station apart from on matchdays (certainly compared to Seaburn for example), but I would expect a modest bounce in passengers boarding and alighting at this stop. The Kingston Park Metro station is certainly used by some to visit the Tesco Extra store situation adjacent.
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