First-class opportunity for repositioning a secondary retail asset

With Durham’s World Heritage status attracting 4.2m tourists a year – and a university population of 18,000 students – the redevelopment and repositioning of the city’s 130k sq ft secondary shopping centre made perfect sense.

Taking into account its central position overlooking the River Wear, as well as its proximity to the main train and bus stations, we relaunched this scheme as ‘The Riverwalk’. Underlying our plans was the chance to open up this inward-looking shopping centre to reveal a new thoroughfare along the riverbank – making the most of its location and fantastic views of the cathedral and castle.

By placing new and existing retail alongside multiple leisure occupiers, and by introducing new residential areas, we transformed what was once a purely retail occupier base into a thriving community space. New tenants include an Odeon six-screen cinema, Lane 7 bowling, Turtle Bay, Cosy Club, Log Fire Pizza restaurants and Durham Distillery. We also built 253 units of student housing, which were pre-sold to Curlew in 2016 – all ready for ‘The Riverwalk’ to open in 2019.