A Strategy for Leisure, Entertainment and Visitor Development
Durham has been highly successful in increasing the number of opportunities to eat and to drink in the City centre, but this is widely perceived to have consolidated the “drinking and fighting” culture for which parts of the City centre have become known. Indeed some feel it has exacerbated this problem by concentrating premises in particular locations, for example, North Road. There is no large commercial cinema in the City centre; cultural and performance venues are limited - though the Gala represents a huge improvement on what went before - and there is a poor and limited range of hotel accommodation – albeit improving rapidly.
In the evenings, the City centre has become the domain of 18-30 year olds while other sections of the community – older people and families – feel excluded from the evening economy of leisure and entertainment. The challenge now is to seek to match the quantitative change in places to eat and drink with a qualitative change, and to diversify the range of supporting venues and facilities so that a wider spectrum of the community is attracted back to the City centre, particularly in the early evening and at weekends.
The Walkergate development has created a new focal point for the evening economy in the City centre, part of the imagined cultural quarter.
The restaurants and bars will offer a unique dining experience during the day and will be attractive venues in the evening for a wider cross-section of the community. The current range of tenants within the complex cater to the restaurant rather than café experience.
Millennium Square will be an informal space for events and entertainment.
There is potential, through sensitive development of the World Heritage Site, to introduce a visitor centre opening up the cultural and historic heritage to a wider audience.
All of the will add to the tourism offer and has the potential to increase length of stay of visitors to the city and attract return visitors thereby realising increase economic benefits.
CULTURE AND PERFORMANCE VENUES
Given the Northeast’s well-deserved reputation for performance and the arts, it is ironic how long it has taken to address the need for venues worthy of supporting this. The Gala Theatre notwithstanding, there is still a great need in Durham for spaces to house a wide range of events in the performing, installation and fine arts (formal and informal), and to house the many fine and rare collections for which Durham is known. A number of existing buildings across the City could usefully be converted for this purpose. The key to the strategy is to make the best use of what already exists.
This is not exclusively about permanent cultural venues. There is a great opportunity to use some of Durham’s beautiful and remarkable buildings for temporary events – for example as festival venues. One of Durham’s strengths is its hidden spaces. By opening up these spaces on an occasional basis, it will give a reason for visitors to come back to the City time and time again.
A number of opportunities have been identified as part of the University’s Cultural Strategy. In particular, it has been suggested that a visitor centre be opened on the Peninsula, integrating the many jewels within and around the World Heritage Site In addition, a dedicated Centre for the Visual and Performing Arts has been mooted, with performance and gallery space to showcase the University’s extraordinary, but often unsung cultural assets.
In the longer term it is reasonable to assume that there may be demand for multipurpose space and for outdoor performance space.
These need to be spread across the City centre; particular foci are the Cultural Quarter in Claypath and the Necklace Park in the City centre.
The latter specifically identifies the need for outdoor venues particularly outside the City centre. The strategy calls for a light touch, building on a series of spaces to provide venues for events and activities. There is no reason why this light-touch philosophy cannot also be used to explore City centre venues for cultural and performance venues.
LEISURE AND ENTERTAINMENT
Leisure facilities - whether operated by commercial or public bodies, or available informally - are significantly underprovided in the City centre. The Theatre and associated facilities are now at the pinnacle of provision, but other existing facilities – swimming pool, nightclubs, etc – are all small scale and relatively poor quality. There is no large commercial cinema in the centre of the City.
Similarly the network of parks and larger open spaces in the City centre is disjointed and most are poorly used, and fails to properly exploit the setting of the river and the river gorge.
Similarly the needs of families and young people, particularly in groups– to meet, play, relax in welcoming and affordable venues – is significantly under-met. The needs of family groups with young children too are catered for only sporadically.
This framework proposes a range of new facilities:
The Necklace Park in the City centre
The concept of the Necklace Park in the City centre is that it creates connections for a range of riverside spaces that provide for informal recreation in the City centre, and for a series of informal culture, performance and sports venues. These are described in more detail in the relevant sections on the Quarters.
A New Swimming Pool
A new swimming pool and associated formal sports facilities is currently being constructed on the Sixth Form College playing fields in the Walkergate area of the City.
A Cinema
While the preferred sizes for commercial cinemas continue to shrink from many screen multiplexes to the current demand for 4-7 screens (2500-3000 sqm on a single level), there are few locations in the City centre that could accommodate such a development without significant detrimental visual and environmental impacts, and without the opportunity costs of a large area of scarce land being dedicated to such a monolithic development.
At present the obvious location where these drawbacks can be overcome is as part of a redevelopment of Millburngate House.
Alternatively a smaller facility (3 screens) could be incorporated into the redevelopment of the Claypath land, complementing the Gala Theatre and Cinema and consolidating the function of the area as the City’s cultural and entertainment quarter.
HOTELS
There are commitments to construct two new hotels in Durham: a four star hotel on the site of the former gasworks and a three star hotel as part of the Walkergate Development. These will mean that Durham has traditional British hotels such as the Royal County and the Three Tuns – expanded coaching inns - and the promise of national and international, modern, high quality chain hotels.
To complete the hotel offer, Durham requires unique hotels of high quality and character, now commonly known as “boutique hotels”, that will consolidate the visitor, weekend and business market in the City. Such hotels are relatively small, occupy historic or unusual buildings, and offer high quality, well designed and fitted accommodation allied to good catering.
There are a number of opportunities to achieve this in the heart of Durham:
The BT Exchange Building
Providence Row Conversion of this building to create a “boutique hotel” with tall and airy rooms and with prospects over the Wear valley.
Elvet
The Elvet area of the City centre appears to be particularly well suited to new or expanded hotel accommodation. This would consolidate the traditional hotel centre in the City.
In the event that Old Shire Hall should become surplus to its current use by the University at some point in the future, its conversion would create a unique hotel venue. If this property is too small to be viable on its own, there is the potential to add rooms through conversion of some of the surplus University “houses” on the north side of Old Elvet as satellite accommodation.
County Hospital
The original building of the County Hospital, a fine example of Victorian Gothic, has potential as the centrepiece of a “boutique” hotel with the opportunity to enhance the accommodation through redevelopment of other parts of the hospital grounds.
RESTAURANTS AND CAFES
Recent changes have seen a substantial growth in the number of cafes and restaurants in the City centre. In addition, Durham has started to see improvements in quality and variety. Such changes are likely to continue and should be encouraged. Missing from the overall mix are quality restaurants in characterful buildings and good spaces toward the top of the market. This should be promoted as a priority to strengthen the food lead offer and to attract a more diverse clientele into the City centre during evenings and weekends.
This could also be used as a springboard for local supply chains where encouragement could be given through incentives, publicity and supportive assistance to those establishments that favour suppliers of local foods and produce.
Such new establishments may be grown anywhere in the City centre provided basic compatibility with adjoining uses are complied with. Claypath, New Elvet and Old Elvet are streets that are particularly well suited; as are some riverside locations. There is a specific proposal for a restaurant to occupy the space above the bank on the approach to the railway station which would afford it a unique prospect and which would require one of the City’s “modern jewel” buildings.
Also missing are affordable, commercial establishments where famalies and young people feel welcomed and catered for after school, on weekends and during the holidays. The Gala and its adjacent Clayport Library currently work hard to welcome young people but such facilities are few and far between.
PUBS AND BARS
The transfer of licensing powers to the City of Durham Council will enable it to take positive control of the location of licensed premises across the City centre, and their performance, to avoid further concentration of pubs and bars and the incidence of anti-social behaviour. There should be no further licenses issued on North Road and existing premises should be encouraged to move from drinks-led to food-led operations.
There needs to be a related set of policies that influence consequential effects, including:
- A high quality, pedestrian friendly public realm.
- Improvements to the environment and facilities at the Bus Station.
- Increasing the number of Taxi licenses and the location and number of taxi ranks, and the proactive management of queuing systems.
- The extension of town centre management to cover the evening economy.
