Billingham bar regeneration plans for former bank

Evolve Estates, the owner of Billingham town centre, has applied for planning permission to change the use of a bank to a bar with an outside seating terrace, access ramps and alterations to windows and doors.

The plans for the empty property at Crown Buildings, Queensway, Billingham, have recently been received by Stockton Council. The bar serving food and drink is proposed to open between 9am and 1am Monday to Friday, 9am to 2am on Saturdays and 10am to 2am on Sundays and bank holidays.(Image: LDRS)

According to the plans, the building will include a new shop front, new windows, doors and walls, a facade opened up with access to the town square with a first-floor overhang and external seating, walls rendered white and dark grey, black-painted columns, a ramp and balustrade, with the bar using 177sqm floorspace.

Neighbours have been notified and have until November 12 to have their say on the plans. Ward and parish councillors, Cleveland Police and officers in the council’s highways, transport and design, flood and environmental health departments have also been consulted on the scheme.

Evolve Estates, a London investment group, bought the town centre from previous owners St Modwen. The deal announced earlier this year saw 320,000sqft of the town’s shopping destination come under new ownership, with tenants such as Asda, B&M and Aldi, including more than 90 retail units and 673 parking spaces attracting about 70,000 people per week.(Image: LDRS)

Then Stockton Council announced it would buy the West Precinct part of the town centre from Evolve to demolish buildings and create shops and homes. A masterplan described this development as “residential-led” with shops in a “more compact area”, and a number of blocks showing as residential.

The masterplan proposed 160 new residential units, about 2,300sqm new commercial space and improved infrastructure and public spaces, using £20m from the previous government’s Levelling Up Fund. It referred to a new “green district centre”, development sites, residential expansion and “densification of the town centre”.

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Councillor Nigel Cooke, Stockton Council’s cabinet member for regeneration and housing, told a full council meeting in July: “The masterplan for Billingham town centre sets out a mixed-use approach. The redevelopment scheme combines improvements to the public realm, new retail floorspace and the redevelopment and reuse of vacant office floorspace along with the delivery of a residential development.”(Image: LDRS)