Mounting doubts surround huge plans to build Europe’s biggest observation wheel in Newcastle.
While developers insist they are “totally committed” to the £100m Whey Aye wheel, one boss has accused the city’s council leader of “killing” a project and local authority chiefs have confirmed that an agreement over a key plot of riverside land has lapsed. Work on the 460ft attraction and a surrounding Giants on the Quayside leisure complex had been due to start in 2020, but there has been no sign of construction beginning at the site of the demolished Spillers flour mill in Ouseburn and its planning permission is due to expire in six months’ time.
Repeated delays to the project, which was backed by city councillors in summer 2019, have been blamed on the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But, in a social media post from September, World Wheel Company (WWC) chief executive Phil Lynagh also claimed that Newcastle City Council leader Nick Kemp was “killing our planned development which would create hundreds of jobs in the Byker and Walker constituencies”.
