Student flat scheme boost for Newcastle building firm

Aug 14 2009 by Chris Knox, The Journal

NEWCASTLE developer Metnor Property Group is ready to push ahead with the construction of a 396-bed student accommodation block for Northumbria University, which it said will protect around 100 jobs in its North East supply chain.

The 133,000sq ft block, which will be built on the site of the existing Winn Products and George Rye industrial and warehouse buildings on Stoddart Street, will be between five and eight storeys tall – standing well above the two-storey roofline of the existing buildings on the site, and substantially bigger than the Biscuit Factory art gallery opposite.

The scheme, which will house 396 beds, is intended to embrace sustainable technologies to reduce its environmental impact, with solar energy collectors and a living ‘green wall’, to provide an environmental buffer to solar gain on south-facing elevations.

The design also includes the potential for public art as part of the external fabric of the building.

It will add to the hundreds of rooms recently built on nearby Stepney Lane by developer Tyne Region North, and the Brackenshaw scheme on Falconar Street, which replaces a development destroyed by fire during construction.

Metnor said that it was undergoing a tendering process with its construction clients and that the project would involve 100 workers being based at the site at any one time, providing guaranteed employment for a number of the region’s worried builders.