VIDEO: Demolition of Adur Civic Centre a '˜triple win' for council

Councillor Neil Parkin at the site as demolition continues

The demolition of the Adur Civic Centre, which is being paid for by the Coast to Capital Local Enterprise Partnership, will ‘make the site more attractive to investors and developers’, he said.

Work at the Ham Road site began weeks ago and is scheduled to finish in Autumn.

Mr Parkin said he was ‘delighted’ with the progress so far.

Reader Zoe Hutton sent in this photo of the demolition works

“This is a triple win situation for us,” he said.

“We are not paying for the demolition, which takes the risk out of it, and once it’s gone we will save more than £100,000 a year in business rates.”

The council is looking to build flats on the site, as part of its ‘exciting plans to regenerate this part of the town centre’.

Any development is likely to include up to 150 homes and commercial space.

Council staff vacated the red-bricked civic centre in 2013 and relocated to the Shoreham Centre.

While a developer, KSD SteelRock, was identified in 2015 to create a high-quality mixed use proposal, the £60million deal did not proceed ‘for a variety of reasons’, a council spokesman said.

A joint venture partner is now being sought and the council hope to have a development brief coming forward shortly, the spokesman said.

Across the road from the Civic Centre, the council is pushing forward with plans to create a £10 million office development on the car park for a company to move into.

“They will be renting it off us and that way we will be getting a revenue stream, hopefully to replace a lot of the grants we are losing from the government,” Mr Parkin said.

A planning application is expected later in the year, he said.

The current pay and display facility will remain until work starts on site.

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