Can shiny slides and timber towers rebuild a rundown town?

7 hours ago

Pamela TickellNorth East and Cumbria

News image — Stockton Waterfront urban park reconnects High Street to the River Tees

Stockton Council An aerial view of the white steps of the parks amphitheatre which faces on to the river. There are winding paths, slides and spots of greenery dotted around the development. High Street in the background is lined with multi-storey brick buildings in different colours. — Stockton Waterfront urban park reconnects High Street to the River Tees

Will demolishing one side of a town's high street turn out to be the very thing that saves it? Amid emptying shop units and falling footfall, a bold choice was made to tear down major buildings and create a park with a difference to reconnect Stockton-on-Tees with the river that flows through it. Now comes its big test.

This weekend Stockton Waterfront urban park will be opened with all the civic pomp and pride associated with such events.

So far, so normal. But the quirks are not so far away.

Visitors can head down to the riverside via the curved granite steps which also form an amphitheatre and performance area. Or they can whizz down an open, 6m (15ft) stainless steel slide.

Meanwhile, three different play parks are dotted around the site, including a water course and timber towers with wheelchair accessible elements.

Stockton Council The wooden play area has two wooden towers and multiple slides and ladders coming off it. The structure is in a huge sand pit. There are swings in the background. — There are three play parks including wheelchair-friendly timber towers

It was not always like this.

On a tour of the area in 1970, broadcaster Michael Canney described Stockton as a "dirty, old industrial riverside" location.

The River Tees had been blocked from the view of those shopping on High Street for decades, but he saw the potential for a waterside development with "seats, plenty of trees, somewhere that everybody would want to go".

Stockton Council A long stainless steel metal slide runs down a grassy area. There are granite steps on the right and a footbridge in the background heads off over the river out of shot. — Slide or steps?

Half a century on, residents and businesses contended with cordons and closures as the dream took shape.

At the centre of the scheme, Esh Construction said, was the 55m (180ft) wide "land bridge" over the rerouted A1305 Riverside road.

Forty-seven beams were installed and 170 cubic metres of concrete poured to form the bridge deck.

Construction manager Stephen McClean said it had been a "massive transformation" that "gives me immense pride".

Stockton Borough Council Construction work along the waterfront area of Stockton. A number of diggers and similar vehicles are on the site. To the left of the image, curved granite steps are being put in place to create a terraced area near where a footbridge spans the River Tees. In the centre is a long, flat concrete area which sits over the still being built main road, creating a short tunnel for traffic. — A land bridge was constructed over the Riverside road to form a route from High Street to river

Looking at the finished park, historical references are around every corner.

Words penned by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage feature on the amphitheatre's steps and pay tribute to the River Tees.

Nine Corten steel archways are etched with historic maps and references to past building occupants and local businesses, including Wilson's Department Store, John Walker's chemist and Doggart's Drapers.

A large solar-powered steel sculpture was also erected to celebrate the Stockton and Darlington Railway.

Stockton Council The white stone steps lead to the amphitheatre. There are flower beds dotted around the platforms that break up the steps. The words engraved read: "The town turned round and the Tees rose up from its bed, performed its festival, juggled the sun in its ripples and swirls. Years of ferrying rust and grie; to the coast, but it stayed true to its course and its cause. Ask the river the time and it always says now. Where it jigs and twirls past these banks the river is ours." — Poetry adorns the steps of the amphitheatre...

A rust coloured steel tube stands in the middle of a pathway. Below a symbol for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the following words have been engraved: "Setting the scene of what Stockton has been. With wide, bustling streets and a market of treats. Where people meet then follow their feet along the might Tees. Containing ingenuity, with bridges that rise like the tides to let boats through. And engines on track, connecting us to the entire nation. — ...and a sculpture that celebrates the Stockton and Darlington Railway

The park's natural elements form an attraction "in their own right", Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council claims.

Planting was created by Ryder Landscapes in partnership with the late Chelsea Flower Show medal-winning designer Nigel Dunnett.

More than 17,000 plants were installed, comprising 224 species and 153 trees.

Hedges were placed to mark historic burgage plots - which were long, narrow strips of land - and the foliage will come out in different colours throughout the seasons,

"Rain garden" areas were planted to capture and soak up water from hard surfaces, the council said.

Stockton Council Three steel archways are set behind a green area planted with colourful flowers and leafy green hedges. There id a red-bricked clocktower in the back. — Thousands of plants have been added alongside the more playful elements

But before any of this could be built, Castlegate Shopping Centre and the Swallow Hotel were demolished.

Site clearance started in late 2022 and building began in December 2024.

Councillor Paul Rowling, deputy leader and cabinet member for resources and regeneration, said the "entire idea" of the project was to repurpose the high street.

"We're trailblazers and its about showing what is possible," he said.

Google The Swallow Hotel is an eight-storey red-bricked hotel that stands tall over the high street shops in front of it. Blocks of uniform hotel rooms have large, square, grey windows in rows. A sign at the top is blue and reads "Swallow Hotel". To the right, the same blue glass is in the shape of a swallow bird in flight. — Swallow Hotel and Castlegate Shopping Centre (pictured in 2018) once blocked views of the river

Rowling said there had been a "slight delay" on the build, which was originally billed to be complete by 2025, but that it had come in on budget.

It was funded with £5m from the council, with £16.5m from the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government and £20m from the Tees Valley Combined Authority.