Rochdale Riverside development progress

Date published: 27 May 2018

Work on Rochdale‘s new £80m shopping and leisure development, Rochdale Riverside, is making good progress with the site excavated and work to create the foundations well under way. 

Main contractor Willmott Dixon has committed to employing and spending locally wherever possible.

Rochdale-based civil engineers, Hovingtons, who are based less than a mile from the town centre, have been working on site for three months after securing a £6m contact to do the groundwork.

The steel frame for the cinema, at the Baillie Street end of the site, is expected to start going up in July.

The development is being funded via an £80m deal which was struck by the council, Genr8 Developments and Kajima, with M&G Real Estate and will see the council pay M&G an annual sum over a 35-year period funded from the rental income received from the scheme’s occupants. The council will then have the option of having ownership of Rochdale Riverside transferred back to them at the end of the 35-year-period.

Rochdale Riverside is the final part of a £250m investment package which has transformed Rochdale town centre beyond all recognition since 2011.