Morgan Sindall Construction celebrates contribution to Wakefield as it completes work at Gradient Mill
Progress at the landmark Tileyard North regeneration project in Wakefield has reached a key milestone with the handover of the new Gradient Mill office development.
Tileyard North is a historic complex of nineteenth century buildings located next to The Hepworth and had been derelict for 20 years, with many of its spaces having deteriorated significantly.
However, developers City & Provincial Properties was able to retain over 80% of the original building fabric, repairing and re-purposing each space.
Redeveloping these Grade II listed mill buildings to form a 135,000 sq. ft hub will create the UK’s largest creative community outside of London, resulting in a major boost for Wakefield’s creative industries.
The hub will also result in the creation of new employment opportunities in the city and improve Wakefield’s reputation as a cultural destination.
Morgan Sindall has now completed its work on Gradient Mill, a four-storey new build office development – designed by Hawkins Brown, project managed by Opera, and procured through the Procure Partnerships Framework – as part of the Tileyard North scheme.
A handover event was attended by representatives of Morgan Sindall Construction, City & Provincial Properties, Tileyard, Fox Lloyd Jones, CBRE and Wakefield Council.
As part of its delivery of the project, Morgan Sindall deployed its Intelligent Solutions approach to manage the complexities of building on a historic site and also delivered a comprehensive social value strategy to ensure the scheme brought significant benefits for the people of Wakefield.
This included 68% local labour being used on the project and 85% of the supply chain being SMEs. This helped contribute to a £2.27 local economic investment for every £1 spent on the project, according to the LM3 measurement tool.
16 apprenticeships were completed, in addition to eight work experience placements for local students and four into-work programmes with the Department for Work and Pensions resulting in two unemployed adults gaining employment.
Additionally, Morgan Sindall completed a Biodiversity Net Gain project with Groundwork Yorkshire that saw planters built, lined and planted on the Calder & Hebble Navigation towpath. Elsewhere, a community improvement Project with Outwood Community Apiary was undertaken with Go Green Waste Management and BWS Skips.
Wakefield Street Kitchen also received a raft of donations, as did local schools and charities who benefitted from donations of surplus office furniture.
As a result of this activity, the project was awarded a Considerate Constructors Scheme score of 45/45.
Ben Hall, Yorkshire area director for Morgan Sindall, said:
This project has been an honour for our team to work on. Not only does it involve the creation of a transformational new development for the city, but in bringing this new office scheme to life we’ve delivered tangible benefits for our Yorkshire home of Wakefield. The social value initiatives we’ve delivered through our presence at Gradient Mill have reiterated that there is a huge amount of potential in our city, and projects like this will be instrumental in shaping its future.
We’re so proud to handover our work at Tileyard North at Gradient Mill, a project that symbolises why this is such an exciting time for the city.”
Paul Kempe, director, City & Provincial Properties, said:
The handover of Gradient Mill marks a pivotal milestone in the project’s journey, supporting the transformation of Wakefield’s Waterfront into a thriving creative hub. This is an exciting time for Tileyard North, as it opens the door to new opportunities for growth and innovation in our community. We want to celebrate and extend our gratitude to everyone who contributed to making this vision a reality and the collaborations that have been instrumental in bringing this development to life.”
The first phase of Tileyard North was part-funded by the Business Rates Pool and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s (WYCA) Local Growth Fund as part of the Wakefield South East Gateway project. The second phase of Tileyard North is one of two projects being supported by the Levelling Up Fund.