THE leader of Lichfield District Council says he stands by efforts to create a bright future for the city centre in the wake of the failed Friarsgate scheme.
The long-awaited redevelopment scheme hit the buffers back in 2018 when it emerged funding could not be found for the project, despite land being purchased and cleared.
Now branded as the Birmingham Road Site, work is now taking place on an alternative mixed-use scheme rather than a solely commercial one as its predecessor had proposed.
It has already seen the multi-storey car park demolished, while conversion has begun on the former Debenhams store to turn it into a new Everyman cinema. It will also house new food and drink outlets.
Meanwhile, the one-time Tempest Ford site has since been sold for housing.
Cllr Doug Pullen, leader of Lichfield District Council, said that the current scheme’s focus meant it would be more achievable than previous efforts.
He said:
“I certainly won’t attempt to defend some of the historical decisions around Friarsgate, but equally I won’t shy away from my part in the decisions from 2019 onwards when I was elected leader.
“I took the decisions to break the site up into smaller component parts to get things moving, to put a design code in place to ensure anything built would take an architectural form which we as residents could be proud of, to drastically reduce the proposed retail units – which would have killed the rest of the city – and to encourage the private sector to develop the site rather than the council trying again and again and failing.
“We will now have a cinema coming to Lichfield, a genuinely high-quality housing development on a brownfield site opposite the train station, a multi-million pound cheque back to the council to cover it’s outlay as well as ongoing rental yield, a linear park to improve the ‘welcome’ to the city from the train station, and hundreds of jobs.”
