Celebrating our first decade as a Marketing Derby Bondholder, one of the key messages we’ve been hearing at their events programme this year has been how 2025 is shaping up to be Derby’s Olympic year. Our Marketing manager Gary Stringer looks at some of the key projects that will see the city going for gold in the months ahead!
Derby’s Olympic Year
Derby’s Olympic year is about to begin in 2025. We’ve heard this on numerous occasions and from a variety of city stakeholders this year, from the people shaping and investing in the city. Recent years have seen a plethora of cranes appear across the skyline, signposting Derby’s investment momentum. As this gathers pace, this “pivotal” year will see a number of much discussed and highly anticipated schemes complete, which look to be just the tip of the iceberg for this “city on the rise”. 1
Enjoy Derby
Following a £35 million refurbishment, Derby’s Market Hall will reopen. The Victorian jewel has been transformed into a 21st century hub for makers, traders, and creatives. A real showcase for Derby’s spirit of innovation, it will serve as a lynch pin of the city’s revived cultural offering.
The £35.1 million Market Hall project is partly funded with £9.43 million from the Government’s Future High Streets Fund. The transformed market will offer a curated mix of traditional and themed stalls. In addition, it will feature make and trade stalls, creative spaces, a cosmopolitan food court and bars, as well as events and pop-up activity.
A second phase of the transformation is well underway, with a focus on refurbishing the interior and developing the public space outside at Osnabruck Square, creating both an enticing destination and gateway to the rest of the city centre.
The cultural offer in 2025 will also see curtain’s up at the Becketwell Live Performance venue. A major project, the 3,500-capacity performance venue is currently in the final stages of construction by Bowmer + Kirkland. Once the £45 million building is handed over during the first quarter of 2025, the venue will be operated by ASM Global, a world-leading venue management company, and will host over 200 cultural and commercial events each year, the first of which are now onsale. The venue is expected to attract an additional 250,000 visitors to Derby, create over 200 new local jobs, and increase levels of investment in surrounding areas of the city centre.
Becketwell Live and the restored Market Hall will place culture at the heart of Derby’s Olympic year
Not to be left out, Derbion is also playing its part in Derby’s regeneration revolution. In September, work began on the creation of a new gateway to the city centre as final funding arrangements for the project were approved by Derby City Council.
The Eastern Gateway, delivered by Derbion and part-funded by the Government’s Future High Streets Fund, will create a new façade and urban garden, transforming the area opposite the bus station and the eastern entrance to the shopping and leisure destination. The Eastern Gateway project is due for completion during the first half of 2025.
Live Derby
The new year will see the completion of the Nightingale Quarter, as Wavensmere Homes finalise their transformation of the former Derbyshire Royal Infirmary into a £175 million residential complex of 925 houses and apartments across the 18.5-acre historic site.
Not resting on their laurels, in Wavensmere will continue work on the long-awaited redevelopment of Friar Gate Goods Yard. The £75 million project to redevelop the site which has stood derelict for over 5 decades will see a mixed-use scheme that will reanimate two landmark Grade II listed buildings into over 110,000 sq ft of commercial space, alongside 276 new build homes.
Works across the 11.5-acre site are already underway. The first phase will incorporate the formation of a new spine road through the site and remediation works to the two listed buildings. Construction of the first residential phase is also due to commence, comprising 63 terraced houses, which will be available for occupation before the end of 2026.
In addition, at the beginning of October, Wavensmere received the green light for Cathedral One – a brand-new apartment scheme in the Cathedral Quarter, overlooking the River Derwent. The development will feature 195 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments, within a finely detailed u-shaped nine-storey red brick building.
The next phase of the £100 million Castleward regeneration scheme will continue with the new year.
Derby City Council is working with regeneration specialist Compendium Living, housing firm Lovell and housing association Riverside, to create Castleward Urban Village, with the aim of delivering more residential space and driving an increase in city living.
In September, a ground-breaking ceremony took place to mark the official start of construction on the fourth phase of the development, which will deliver 112 new homes. Situated between the Derbion shopping centre and Derby Midland Station, Castleward will provide around 700 new homes, as well as green space and nearly 35,000 sq ft of commercial retail space.
At Marketing Derby’s Annual Property Summit in July, it was announced that over 8,000 homes have been built or are in the pipeline, the equivalent to a town the size of Matlock being brought into the DE1 postcode. More residents, equals more footfall creating a more diverse and vibrant city centre and acting as a catalyst for further investment across both residential and retail.
More city centre living as work progresses at Friar Gate Goods Yard and Castleward (Images: Marketing Derby)
Work Derby
The opening of the University of Derby’s £70 million new Business School in 2025 will bring with it an additional 6000 students to the city centre by 2030.
Situated on a site adjacent to the university’s Friar Gate Square, the new Business School is designed to be a facility for cutting-edge research, learning and teaching. It is also intended to support businesses in the region and across the globe.
The Business School will include facilities such as an auditorium, a stock market financial trading room, a creativity lab, an extended reality suite and a range of social collaborative study spaces and quiet contemplative areas.
The development, which is proposed to be net zero carbon in construction and operation, kick starts the University’s City Masterplan, which aims to develop its footprint in the city and improve connectivity across sites.
PDP attended Marketing Derby’s annual London Embassy in November, (which was also their milestone 500th event) and heard from Alice Hunt, group communications director at Rolls-Royce, Derby’s largest private sector employer, who reaffirmed the engineering giant’s commitment to investing in the city.
With a presence in the city stretching back over a century, Derby is home to Rolls Royce’s Civil Aerospace and Defence divisions. Recent years has seen the company investing heavily in nuclear; its Raynesway site will build power plants for the AUKUS submarines, and in the creation of a Nuclear Skills Academy, create the nuclear engineers of the future.
Speaking at her very first London Embassy event, Claire Ward, the Mayoral figurehead of the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA), explained the opportunities that devolution will bring to the region in 2025 and beyond. Claire’s speech at Mansion House coincided with both the launch of a new Inclusive Growth Commission, chaired by Andy Haldane – the former chief economist of the Bank of England – which will recommend how EMCCA invests a £4 billion funding pot, and confirmation by the Chancellor of £160 million to establish an East Midlands Investment Zone, which includes Derby’s Infinity Park.
Infinity Park and beyond…
Derby’s Olympic year looks set to continue well beyond the next 12 months as the city’s renaissance gathers momentum. Derby City Council recently undertook a public consultation seeking views on planning guidance that could help pave the way for an ambitious regeneration of an area around Derby’s railway station.
This follows the launch of plans to create a new railway campus in Derby devoted to companies and organisations involved in the rail sector have been officially launched. A partnership between Derby City Council, Great British Railways Transition Team (GBRTT), East Midlands Combined County Authority, and wider stakeholders, Rail Campus Derby aims to become a key hub for the UK’s rail industry.
Following a successful bid, in 2023 Derby was chosen as the new home of Great British Railways, beating off competition from five other shortlisted cities from across the UK. Having already established a presence in the city, the Great British Railways Transition Team will search for a permanent home for the GBR headquarters with a number of sites earmarked.
Government funding of £20 million has been secured for two major cultural projects in Derby, allowing the restoration of the historic Guildhall Theatre and Derby Theatre’s redevelopment plans that include a new accessible and flexible studio theatre adjoining the current building.
Looking ahead to the next decade, Derbion recently unveiled their Masterplan for the potential development of three key sites within their footprint that will create new homes, retail and commercial spaces, landscaped public areas and a cultural square.
There is no doubt that Derby is certainly aiming for gold, not just in 2025, but in its aspirations to harness the potential of public-private partnerships to transform the city. At PDP we believe these are exciting times for residents, businesses and investors, and that Derby’s Olympic year will leave a lasting legacy!
Derby’s Olympic Year | 1: Councillor Nadine Peatfied, Deputy Mayor of the East Midlands, Leader of Derby City Council
