Sheffield city centre finally ready to shed poor relation tag compared to Leeds and Manchester: Chris Burn

For the past few months, I’ve been working with colleagues on a semi-regular basis in the Sheffield offices of National World, The Yorkshire Post’s parent company.

They are in the Cubo building on Carver Street, yards from the new eco-friendly Elshaw House office building that is being created as part of the redevelopment process.

The construction work has made it difficult to cut down to The Moor shopping street but the pedestrian route was back open when I was back in last week – meaning you could get between the two locations in a couple of minutes allowing me to nip down there for lunch and a chance to browse some of the January sales offers.

It was only a small thing but provided me with a direct insight into how Heart of the City will create a much more cohesive city centre. At the other end of Carver Street is the popular Division Street, which is filled with independent shops and bars that is also now more connected to The Moor.

It may not sound like much on its own but a central focus of the redevelopment is to improve how people are able to move around a city centre that for years has been a poor relation to the likes of Leeds and Manchester. The scheme, which is funded by Sheffield City Council, has been years in the making and involves new offices, restaurants and shops, repurposed historic buildings and an already opened new park.

Given it has followed decades of false dawns and disappointments for the redevelopment of Sheffield city centre as Meadowhall drew shoppers away from the centre of town in their tens of thousands, it is unsurprising there has been some cynicism locally about whether the plans will work.

The retail-led proposal which preceded it – called Sevenstone and involving developer Hammerson – was in the works since the early 2000s but in the wake of the financial crisis went through a series of delays and revisions before the plug was finally pulled in summer 2013.

Those delays may be proving something a blessing in disguise as it has allowed the plans to adapt to the changing nature of high streets in the era of online shopping. That has held true with the potential spoke in the wheel for the plans that came in 2021 with the closure of John Lewis, which had been expected to be the cornerstone of the scheme.

However, the old John Lewis building is itself in the process of being repurposed and should eventually become a a mixed-use combination of offices and independent shops, bars and restaurants – with its new name of ‘Cole Store’ referencing the building’s historic original title, Cole Brothers. Evolving for the future while respecting the past is an example in miniature of what Heart of the City is all about.

Sheffield city centre remains far from perfect – begging and homelessness is sadly fairly commonplace while the once-bustling Fargate area in particular looks pretty down-at-heel at the moment. However, separate multi-million plans for its renovation are in the pipeline, while the long-empty former Primark store on the nearby High Street is set to be replaced by a 40-storey skyscraper filled with student flats.

Things are looking up – literally – for Sheffield’s future.