City of York Council is pumping at least £10m into a joint venture development project with Network Rail for what it describes as the county’s “premier brownfield development site”.
The cash — coming from the authority’s Economic Infrastructure Fund (EIF) — is being used to kick-start the 86-acre city centre scheme behind York railway station. It’s hoped the Network Rail-owned site will eventually provide more than 860,000 sq ft of Grade A office space and nearly 500 new homes.
Both organisations recently signed a memorandum of understanding for the York Central project, seen as the first step toward a more formal partnership. Work on the mixed-use scheme is scheduled to start early in 2016, although part of the site has already been developed with the opening, earlier this year, of Network Rail’s £36m Workforce Development Centre and Rail Operating Centre.
Kersten England is chief executive of City of York Council. “This agreement is a major milestone in a relationship that we have been developing with Network Rail over the past three-and-a-half years,” she explained.
“It signals a significant turning point in both the site’s and the city’s history and builds on the momentum for brownfield site development seen in Hungate and on the Terry’s site both already in development.”
Describing the York Central project as both the city and Yorkshire’s “premier brownfield development” England added: “The site will offer the city an opportunity to address the acute, growing shortage of high-quality office space, as well as meeting the severe challenges the city faces in providing homes for York residents.”
As managing director for Network Rail’s LNE & EM route, Phil Verster, said the latest agreement and council funding was a very positive step towards developing a very challenging site.
“We have been working hard with City of York Council to produce a plan which will allow phased and achievable development, and which uses this large piece of land to maximum benefit for York residents and businesses alike,” Verster added.
Now that an initial development master plan has been agreed the pair will launch the campaign to attract major funding from central Government for critical infrastructure to the site. So far the partnership has raised £27m toward transport infrastructure from the West Yorkshire Plus Transport Fund and £1.65m for site remediation from the Leeds City Region Local Growth Fund.
