Provender

In joint venture with Merchant Place Developments, Rokeby has purchased the 4.13 acre Bakers Quay site within Gloucester Docks, to implement a £60.0 mil. regeneration of this important city centre site. Provender is a new building of 47 apartments and 4,210 sqft of ground floor café/restaurant accommodation.

The site, which has been vacant for over 10 years, comprises 3 listed warehouses which were originally constructed in the late 19th Century and are adjacent to the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal. It is also adjacent to the Gloucester Historic Docks and Peel Shopping Centre’s Factory Outlet Centre. Next plc has also started construction of a 28,000 sqft store on the neighbouring retail park.

Gloucester Historic Docks is a remarkably complete example of an inland Victorian port, constructed when Gloucester was the main corn importing docks for the South West. It’s warehouses have all been successfully converted into residential apartments and is now the centre of a thriving residential community. Peel have expanded their Factory Outlet Centre by introducing a leisure quarter which includes a 10 screen Cineworld cinema and 11 restaurants, the majority of which sit along the pedestrianised street Merchants Road. The Bakers Quay development will be the final piece of the jigsaw in the regeneration of Gloucester Docks.

Planning consent was granted on the 1st March 2016 for a mixed use development:

Phase 1

• Provender Mill: 47 new build residential apartments and 4,210 sqft of ground floor restaurant accommodation
• Hotel: new build 104 bedroom hotel for Premier Inn
• Engine Shed: conversion to 5,634 sqft Beefeater restaurant
• Costa Coffee: new build café and drive through
• Dockyard Cottages: Restoration of 4 cottages
• Infrastructure: new external square and canal walkways.

Phase 2

• Downing’s: conversion to 42 residential apartments over 17, 963 sqft of restaurant accommodation overlooking an extended Merchants Road
• The Malthouse: conversion to 88 residential apartments
• Transit Shed: rebuild and extended to provide 6,700 sqft canalside restaurant
• Infrastructure: new pedestrianised street and canal walkways.

Provender is the first residential building to be completed, re-built after an arson attack and comprising 47 new apartments and 4,210 sqft café/restaurant accommodation on the ground floor. Works were completed in August 2018, preceded by the four cottages at the end of 2017.

The design of the building was agreed with Historic England and the Local Planning Authority as a sensitive, contemporary replacement to the former warehouse which sat on the site. Built to the same dimensions, complete with elevator shaft overhanging the canal, the brick gable ends were built as complete replicas to the original building, with new cladding facades and balconies to the main building frontages.