The Goods Yard, Stoke-on-Trent - November 2023
To quote the developer Capital&Centric:
We’re creating a new community next to Stoke-on-Trent’s main train station, turning an unloved industrial site into a vibrant urban quarter. The Goods Yard will be a major new destination for residents, locals and visitors… a place to live, work and hang out.
It’ll be a proper neighbourhood, restoring the existing buildings into beautiful work and leisure spaces, as well as building well-designed, sustainable apartments nestled among new green public spaces.
We’re unlocking around £60m investment into the site, which is owned by Stoke-on-Trent City Council and has been earmarked for a new lease of life for the last few years.
The development is a much needed bit of positivity for a city which has been stuck in a major decline for decades, hopefully it will be a catalyst for more things.
As pictured below the site was unsurprisingly originally a railway goods yard and is sandwiched between the Trent Mersey canal and the railway. The sidings were cleared many years ago and are now a car park for the railway station. The part now being redeveloped was most recently used as warehousing and offices.
The scene above was much altered by the construction of the A500 in the 1970's, a large chunk of Stoke was cleared and the canal rerouted to make way.
The development comprises a few parts: Goods Yard Living - an eleven storey residential building featuring 174 apartments. Vaults Warehouse - formerly the vaulted basement portion of the good warehouse, this is to become an events and co-working space. The Pavilion - a new building on top of the vaults, this is to be a workspace or leisure facility. Signal Box - wrongly named much to my annoyance, this former none signal box will be a café/bar. A hotel is also pencilled in for a future phase.
Me and MotionlessMike finally got around to having a mooch after the building had been topped out. Weather conditions weren't ideal, being both rainy and windy but we made do. The roof of the apartment building made for decent views of the surrounding area, and the vaulted warehouse was a nice photogenic space.
Nice to do something a bit different for a change, it's been a while since I've done something high, even if eleven storeys is relatively pedestrian in the grand scheme of things.
