NORTHERN QUARTER PORTSMOUTH.
Anchored by John Lewis and Marks & Spencer, Northern Quarter will provide over 90 new outlets, cafes and restaurants, 200 residential apartments, a hotel, together with 2,300 car parking spaces, bus and taxi facilities, and direct access from the city's realigned main access road.
The development will create three new pedestrianised open shopping streets,
each with a differing character and retail mix and linked by new public spaces.
Northern Quarter is fully integrated to the city centre, building upon the existing streets and with direct access to Cascades shopping centre.
Northern Quarter covers 17 acres of Portsmouth city centre and construction was scheduled to begin in 2008, with a targeted completion of 2011. But due to the downturn
in the economic situation, the development has been temporarily postponed.
The development employs a mix of uses as follows, retail circa 900,000 sq ft gross internal, leisure 20,000 sq ft, residential 200 residential units (25% affordable), Hotel A 4* 150 bed hotel, parking 2,300 spaces.
Two main public spaces will be created. The first is Church Square, adjacent to
St Agatha's Church and Marks & Spencer. The second will lie to the north of the scheme, containing a new hotel and providing an arrival point when Northern Quarter is approached from the north via Andrew Bell Street.
The streets will be structured into two distinct zones with "footways" either side of the central carriageway. This provides a traditional shape to the streets, in spite of their predominantly pedestrian use. The division of the streets into two areas also aids pedestrian movement patterns by providing slow and fast track zones.
