‘Sheffield is a land of opportunity for developers’

Manchester-based developer Capital & Centric is currently on the ground in Sheffield transforming a former steel mill into 97 new homes across three buildings. TheBusinessDesk.com caught up with Adam Higgins, co-founder of the company to discuss its plans for Sheffield, the wider north and the key to development delivering for a city.

Eyewitness Works is set to transform a former Sheffield city centre cutlery works into spacious homes and apartments when it completes in in Q1 of 2023.

For developer Adam Higgins it marks a return to the city having previously delivered Leopold Square when he worked with ASK.

“I’d done quite a bit in Sheffield in the past but this is our first venture as Capital & Centric into the east,” he says.

Adam Higgins

Capital & Centric have been leading the way when it comes to revitalising often forgotten parts of a city – it’s behind several developments spanning across the North including Kampus, a £250m scheme that has created a new neighbourhood in Manchester city centre.

Discussing how things differ on the eastern side of the Pennines he explained: “I think to an extent Manchester has perhaps led the way in terms of regional cities in grasping the sort of public private sector partnership, partly because it had to after the bomb in Manchester and everyone came together to regroup and rebuild.”

He however was keen to highlight that the project at Eyewitness Works is actually the coming to fruition of three to four years work with Sheffield City Council and he noted they have a “strong public private sector collaboration approach”.

In fact Higgins pointed out that the project as a whole is partly thanks to some very proactive work by the council, who helped relocate Taylors Eye Witness – a historic cutlery manufacturer in the city – out of the building now owned by Capital & Centric.

“Before Capital & Centric’s time, the council actually did a deal with Taylor Eye Witness to help them relocate outside of the Grade 2 listed city centre premises that were wholly inappropriate for a modern manufacturing business.

“The council had very proactively bought the site which in two-fold helped an existing local business but helps the council with its own regeneration plans.”

It’s this commercial approach from the council which Higgins highlighted is now seeing dividends as it is resulting in the emergence of a new quarter in the city led by the Eyewitness Works scheme.

CGI of Mesters Village

He added that this isn’t the only scheme that Capital & Centric have their eye on in the city and added that they are looking to bring forward Mesters Village – a £200m city centre village featuring homes, cafes, bars, delis and a school – with the council and others.

This leads nicely on to the developers plans for the rest of the North, having already delivered award winning schemes in Manchester and with projects in Stockport, Stoke-on-Trent, Rochdale and Bolton, are the team actively looking for sites in Yorkshire?

“Our policy is really anywhere we can get to relatively easy. So we’re looking at things in Sheffield and we’d like to do a lot more in the city. I think because I’d spent so long there developing Leopold Square I know the city reasonably well and I really like the city, it’s got a positive sort of compact feeling to it.”

He added that the investment in the public realm is something the city has perhaps done better than others including Manchester.

“[The investment in public realm] has made Sheffield city centre a really attractive place, which goes quite a long way in showing the vision and ambition of the city to enable and encourage developers like us to come in.

CGI of Eyewitness Works in Sheffield

“But what I find interesting about the city is there’s not a huge amount of real true city centre living, and there’s an enormous opportunity there because as cities and towns evolve and retail drops off – something only accelerated by the pandemic – they need to reinvent themselves and there’s no better way than by getting more people and footfall on the ground.

“And you do that in my opinion by creating really good quality residential so that you start to get some real vibrancy and busyness in the city centre all week long and at the weekend.”

The other benefit the developer noted for a new type of residential living is the retention of talent and by creating these developments you perhaps “stop them being tempted to go elsewhere” and also attract “graduates from other cities as well”.

This pool of talent can then further support the local economy and Higgins points out “where the talent goes the businesses will follow.”

“In the new world we’re all in, [attracting and retaining talent] is what cities and towns need to do and Sheffield is well placed to do that.”

So if Sheffield is a land of opportunity for developers and as such the council who would like to attract more people and businesses to it, what is the key to success?

“It’s about trying to encourage quality from the developers and always making sure the architecture is interesting and good quality so that it doesn’t become an eyesore or carbuncle in three or four years for the sake of snatching at development opportunities. Planners need to be firm and need to be quite strong, and this is coming from a developer.”

It’s the focus on quality design that leads Higgins to explain how the development which includes two Grade 2 listed builds and a six storey new build has created some interesting features in the new homes.

“All the [listed] buildings are very narrow, they were built that way in 1852 for the reason that it meant there was lots of natural light came from both sides of the building when people were doing quite intricate work.

“This feature means that almost all the apartments are double sided which is really unique. This also means naturally within the existing buildings there are courtyards which we’re going to turn into lush green residents gardens rather than fill them with car parking in order to put some life and soul back into the building.”

Screwpress in the courtyard of Eyewitness Works by Capital Centric

The heritage of the site is also not being lost beyond the listed status of the building. The developer recently showcased the original steel press from the site in place in one of the courtyards of the scheme, as well as looking to open up the original fireplaces and showcasing the various safes that exist in the building in what Capital & Centric consider “a mark of the history that’s in the site”.

Looking beyond Eyewitness and Sheffield, Higgins explains that ultimately he considers the role of a residential developer as an important one and one that can’t be run by a spreadsheet.

“Where development perhaps doesn’t work out quite as it should is where it’s being run as a spreadsheet – that’s when it doesn’t work for the city or for the communities. Sometimes you’ve got to do things even if they don’t appear to make more money, perhaps they appear to initially make less money. Our theory and hope is that by doing it properly, ultimately we make that profit back by creating a place where people actually want to live.”

As the conversation ends it’s clear that Higgins and the team at Capital & Centric have some ambitious and bold plans for Sheffield but perhaps most importantly the heritage and history that is within the Grade 2 listed building is in safe hands as it transform in its second century!