Cautious welcome for town's development plan

Previous schemes intended to regenerate Middlesbrough's Middlehaven area - home to the Old Town Hall - have fallen through

Plans that could see up to 3,400 homes built in a long-derelict part of Middlesbrough have been cautiously welcomed.

Councillors recently rubber-stamped appointing Capital and Centric as the development partner to lead the regeneration scheme at Middlehaven.

The scheme, around the Old Town Hall and towards the waterfront, is also set to include leisure and retail attractions.

Labour's Theo Furness, executive member for development, described it as potentially being of great benefit to the town and wider area but recalled previous plans having fallen through.

Furness cited the importance of having a "credible" partner given those earlier struggles.

He told colleagues at a meeting: "There have been many imaginations and iterations of what it could be, some CGI images of quirky buildings and you know, we've got a giant art sculpture there, but nothing's ever got off the ground."

He said it would be "ground-breaking" for the town and the wider region if "we can pull everything off that we say we want to do in this [council] report", but added he wanted to voice an air of "caution" due to the number of false starts.

Furness said that funding gaps would occur and it would need to be looked at how these could be plugged.

He described work on Middlehaven as "piecemeal" so far, highlighting Boho and the Old Town Hall project.

But looking to the future, he said: "We want to make Middlesbrough centre a place where people live, a place where people go to work, again."

'False dawns'

The executive unanimously approved the use of £3.6m from the Towns Fund grant allocation to develop designs, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

"If it does come to a point where it's not feasible, we've got to be honest and say it's not feasible," Furness added.

"We're not going to promise something that we can't deliver. But we will do our utmost best as a council and as officers to obviously bring this forward."

Councillor Luke Henman, also Labour, welcomed the project, saying it would be "fantastic" for the town, highlighting Middlehaven as the "epicentre" of where Middlesbrough came from.

Labour Mayor Chris Cooke said he was "quietly confident" about the project, adding: "It's important that we don't put the horse before the cart and do 18 press releases before we've even taken the decision".

While overwhelmingly welcoming the news, Labour's Peter Gavigan thought it would be wise to "proceed with caution" because of the number of "false dawns" in the past.