Looking ahead with confidence

Sharon Appleby is hugely optimistic about the future of Sunderland city centre.

But she is realistic about the fact that people have been promised things in the past which have not materialised.

“You can understand some of the scepticism because certain things have taken longer than anybody would have hoped,” she said.

“But actually I come in every day now past the Vaux site and it makes me smile, because I think every single day it looks different . If people can just hold their nerve, there are a lot of things that are a little but under the radar at the moment. Once we can start to talk about that, I think confidence will build.”

Long-term sustainability is the key: “We’ve still got to focus on events because they are really important, but they can’t be the only thing,” said Sharon. “They are a one-off hit, people come in for the event, then they leave. We need to build a much more sustainable offer, so they come regardless of whether there’s an event on because they value what is here.

“I do think we have challenge in that there aren’t enough people using the city centre. We people who work in the city centre not using the city centre as often as they could or might - and they certainly don’t use it on an early evening.

“The other thing is people who live or work on the outskirts go elsewhere, they don’t necessarily come to the city centre because we’ve not done a great job of promoting what is actually here.

“There are some fantastic things here and there is a lot of it, but what we haven’t done is pull it all together and consistently say: “This is what is here, come and enjoyit,comeandexperienceit.

“So how do we deal with that, how we do we work up an economic offer as things start to develop, as there are moreworkersinSunderland, asVauxcomesonandsomeof the other developments start to really take shape?”