“I’m a little battered and bruised,” laughs the man who plans to build a landmark 12-storey building on Bristol’s Harbourside. The announcement this morning has certainly created a talking point across the city.
The proposed permanent new home for the food and retail businesses currently operating from shipping containers at Cargo, Wapping Wharf, is not lacking in ambition. And early reaction to the consultation has already been mixed, with a few Cargo fans worried the unique space will lose that all important vibe.
“It was always going to be a bit contentious,” says Stuart Hatton, managing director of Umberslade, owners and developers of Wapping Wharf. “We put our body armour on this morning and we were prepared.”
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The planned new development for the site at Wapping Wharf North, which sits behind M Shed, is designed to build on the existing success and special character of the neighbourhood. The designs aim to create a ‘bold, innovative centrepiece’ for Wapping Wharf, with new homes, shops, restaurants, takeaways and workspaces to complete this newly created community on Bristol’s harbourside.
The centrepiece of the new development will be a striking 12-storey building with cascading plant-filled terraces fronting onto Museum Square and facing Bristol's Harbourside. The top two floors will include a double-height rooftop restaurant with panoramic views of Bristol.
At a time when other high-rise buildings in the city are causing controversy, the proposed 12-storeys at Wapping Wharf is sure to be hotly debated. But Stuart is ready for that discussion.
“Yes, the most contentious thing about this is probably the 12-storey building because there is a lively debate in Bristol at the moment about the height of buildings. But I feel the height is appropriate for a landmark building facing Museum Square.
“We’ve done a huge amount of analysis and worked on this project for 18 months. We’ve spoken to loads of people and spent a huge amount of time discussing the plans with the retailers, with designers and architects and with Historic England.
“We explored tall buildings and low buildings but what we’ve tried to do is strike a balance and put forward a really exciting landmark building which will become a beacon for the harbour. A lot of people may not like that but we can’t keep everyone happy.
“However, ask most people in a few years time when they’re sitting on terraces overlooking the harbour and across to the amazing sunsets to the west and they might then realise it was the right thing to do. There needs to be an element of trust.”
This permanent new home for independent businesses currently at Cargo will certainly be multifaceted. On the ground floor, small independent businesses will sell groceries and produce in a new double-height ‘continental-style’ permanent covered market called Cargo Market Hall.
Surrounding this, around the edges of the building will be takeaway restaurants and casual dining businesses with outdoor seating. The floors above will be home to dine-in restaurants, with cascading green outdoor terraces offering views across the harbour.
Topping the building on the tenth floor will be the first rooftop restaurant on Bristol Harbourside. It will offer diners unparalleled panoramic views across the docks and city.
Stuart says: “The height of the tallest part of the building is just above the height of the cranes on the docks and the view from the rooftop restaurant and terrace will be almost 360 degrees - it will be stunning. It will be unlike any other building - we’re not aware of any other building similar to this.”
The proposed consultation also includes hundreds of new homes and green public spaces. But not everybody agrees judging from early reaction on social media.
Stuart says: “I saw a comment on Twitter about us building a tall ugly building and covering it with greenery but that’s not the plan.
“The reason we’ve introduced the greenery is because we’re trying to create a highly sustainable, biodiverse building. All of that greenery will be maintained by the management company and the retailers love the idea already.
“It’s a bit depressing when you see these comments because you put your heart and soul into it and people are making comments when they don’t know the full picture. I’ve been doing this for 19 years and I can’t afford for it not to be great.
“I’d never forgive myself if it wasn’t great. I still believe we’re putting forward an amazing vision for what Wapping Wharf can be and ultimately it’s about making Wapping Wharf even better.”
Cargo is currently home to some of the most popular and original food and retail businesses in Bristol. These include award-winning restaurants like Root, Box-E and Salt & Malt plus The Bristol Cheesemonger, Woky Ko, Gambas and Seven Lucky Gods.
Stuart says the hope is that most of these will move into the new building and it has been designed in such a way that different levels will be tailor-made for different businesses.
“We’ve designed it so everybody who is currently at Cargo can move to this new building. One or two retailers might say this is not where they want to go with their business and I totally respect that but I believe the vast majority of the restaurants will want to.
“As to who gets each one, we’re still in the early days and haven't even got planning yet. But there’s a real community at Cargo and I know all the businesses individually.
“I frequent them all, I know the chefs and the staff. We’ve got an idea where we can place the individual businesses already.
“On the ground floor it will be more of the takeaway-style businesses like Loke Poke and Squeezed, and then we’ll have this amazing indoor market. I want to recreate a sort of Barcelona-style indoor food market.
“I want this area to have the fishmonger, the butcher, a greengrocer, the cheese shop, wine shop, cider shop, bakery, cake shop - it will be a really good South West produce indoor market.
“As you move up the building, we’ll have more casual dining and then as you go up the building further, there will be more of the dine-in restaurants.
“It’s all about making the space better for them all. We’ve designed it around the retailers and we kind of know where each business will work best.
“I’d also love a cookery school in there, and although Cargo is food-centric, there are opportunities for other business to open there. We’ve always curated a mix of retailers - the biggest challenge is that most of the businesses have needed more space so it’s not about getting lots more businesses, it’s about letting the existing ones breathe even more.
“I don’t operate like the national developers. It’s about the businesses and the maturation of the community in the mix and people have to trust me on that as I’ve spent the past six years filling these units with amazing businesses.”
But what about concerns that the eventual removal of the shipping containers will strip away the unique vibe at Cargo? “People have said they don’t want to see the containers go but it’s not about the containers, it’s about the people and the businesses. You don’t say ‘I’d love to go out for dinner in a shipping container’.
“The vibe comes from the individual businesses and if we give them the space to put their stamp on the new units, it will be a different vibe but it will still be a great vibe. But I do feel a huge responsibility, I really do.
“What I can assure people of is that it won’t be corporate, we are not a corporate company. We absolutely won’t be letting national restaurant chains come into Wapping Wharf because that would ruin the vibe.
“When it comes to rents, Cargo has always been about what can a good restaurant afford, what can a good retailer afford so we started with £150 a week.
“The businesses all want more space so the rents will be go up proportionately from what they pay at the moment but we’re a developer landlord and I want to be a happy landlord.
“A happy landlord is one who has tenants who can afford to pay their rent, who are running great businesses and making money and are successful. I’d be mad not to ensure that.
“What would possess me to design a building and then not populate it with all the wonderful businesses already there? It’s depressing that people would even think that."
The new development will include around 240 new sustainable, ‘high quality’ homes of different sizes and tenures, including 20 per cent affordable, for social rent or shared ownership, with the remainder for open market sale. It is hoped a wide range of apartment sizes, individual balconies and several shared landscaped rooftop gardens will help attract people who want to live there for the long term, building on the strong sense of community that already exists at Wapping Wharf.
Rising above a two-storey podium, the apartments will be housed in five buildings which step down in height towards Wapping Road. Stuart says: “Wapping Wharf is successful because we have a real mix of tenures. The site already has a commitment for 20 per cent affordable housing and that was agreed back in 2007.
“We have a great relationship with the council and their housing officers so we’re also exploring proper family homes. The range of housing units is greater than just meeting minimum space standards and we’re looking to create a diverse range of one, two and three-bedroom homes.”
These are early days on this major new harbourside project. Stuart says they’ll make the planning application in the autumn but actual construction won’t happen for a couple of years at least.
“The planning application will take some time, and I’m sure there will be a great deal of debate, but we’d expect to get planning permission in the spring or summer of 2023. It’s an incredibly complex building so we’ll then need to do all the designs and find a contractor so there’s a long way to go and I don’t think we’ll be doing anything on site until well into 2025.”
In the meantime, it will be business as usual at Cargo 1 and 2, although those businesses know they will be relocated at some point closer to the start of building work. Quite when or how that will happen isn’t quite confirmed, according to Stuart.
“We’ve talked to the vast majority of business owners and they know our intention is to relocate them while we build the new building. We did suggest building a festival-style village for them but the majority came back and said they didn’t want that, but for us to simply move the containers.
“The honest answer is that we haven’t actually resolved this yet but the general plan is to relocate those businesses somewhere else at Wapping Wharf at a time when it’s a quieter trading period. We’ll work closely with them on this as we’ve got to make it work for them and for us.
“The businesses appreciate that they’ll have to go through a bit of upheaval but they know the end result will be amazing.”
Public consultation on the proposals for Wapping Wharf North takes place until July 8. Drop-in style consultation sessions will be held at CARGO Work (on the corner of Cumberland Road and Wapping Road) on Tuesday June 21 June and Wednesday June 22, from 4-7pm and will provide an opportunity to view and discuss the latest plans.
After this, an exhibition of the proposals will also be on display on the Wapping Wharf site hoarding, at the Wapping Road end of Museum Street. The consultation material will also be available to view at www.wappingwharfnorth.co.uk where there will be an opportunity to give feedback via an online survey.
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