Redcar Palace Theatre demolition and regeneration

As part of Redcar Council’s redevelopment of the seafront and esplanade, one of the key areas of regeneration was to build a state of the art creative ‘hub’ on the site of the old Palace Theatre. The old building, whilst previously covered with horrible 1960′s cladding had become almost ignored and yet it in it’s heyday it was a place of entertainment and a popular social location for the people of Redcar. Its many guises included a theatre, cinema, social club, video store and amusement arcade when it became empty in the 80′s.

There was an element of local public outcry when the cladding was removed to expose the original facade as part of the demolition and the once magnificent structure was visible for all to see one last time before the demolition commenced and it was during this period I thought i would go down almost on a weekly basis to record the staged demolition. Essentially it was due to us being awarded the tender to create the new branding for the impending creative hub, that spiked our interest in the old building, our branding services and tender application beating a host of local, regional and national design agencies and the fact that Redcar Council had awarded this kind of creative tender to a local agency like ours keeping the project within their local economy was a massive bonus. The Palace Theatre held many memories for local residents of Redcar and to some extent I can sympathise that another period building has been demolished for a modern alternative, but I can understand the council’s remit to want to regenerate the local economy, the whole sub-region and also to help stimulate the untapped potential of the area’s creative industries, the new creative hub will certainly help this regeneration and I’m pleased to say we have played our part in creating the new branding that will adorn the building once its complete.

So, on to the photos, have a look through the following gallery and you will see some images of the various stages of the demolition as it commenced. The council will have some of their own images and these can be viewed on their Redcar seafront progress Flickr page here. One other interesting reference is the council’s new cgi animation of the Redcar seafront development, featuring the Palace Hub (complete with the logo we created) and the Vertical Pier, projects that will help revitalise Redcar and boost tourism and the local economy. The video can be viewed on another of our blog posts titled ‘Redcar seafront regeneration, Palace Hub and the Vertical Pier’