True placemaking means creating mixed communities, where commerce, leisure and residential all sit happily together.

Our work on Old Vicarage Place epitomises our commitment to the concept.

Situated in the Cornish town of St Austell, Old Vicarage Place shopping centre was built in the early 1980s.

The western side of the shopping centre abutted a site that had been earmarked for a major regeneration scheme by the South West Regional Development Authority - and we saw a number of opportunities to add value and create synergies between their scheme and our asset.

The roof of Old Vicarage Place was originally occupied by a car park that was no longer in use.

We developed plans to build a new exciting ‘adventure’ hotel on the space to accommodate visitors to St Austell, as well as building a new indoor and outdoor arts entertainment venue for  exhibitions, music and other performances.

In parallel, the RDA's White River Place regeneration scheme meant that the toilet areas within Old Vicarage Place Shopping became vacant.

We saw this as an opportunity to redevelop the toilets and to relocate a number of tenants from neighbouring lock-up units to enable the redevelopment of this part of the shopping centre, as well as creating a single retail/activity unit.

Within this unit an area was created for an internal climbing wall along with retail concessions specialising in outdoor sports equipment such as climbing, walking, cycling and fishing.

Separate to these plans, permission was sought for an outdoor market located to the rear of 19-21 Fore Street for the sale of fresh Cornish produce.

The remaining common areas of Old Vicarage Place were redecorated and refurbished to complement the RDA’s exciting White River Place regeneration scheme, before the centre was sold for an excellent return on our investment.

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