Major Preston projects set for completion in 2025

2025 is set to be a big year for Preston – with a raft of long-running regeneration projects set to come to a conclusion and several other schemes poised to get under way.

First up will be the opening of the city’s ‘Animate’ cinema, leisure and restaurant complex, whose first customers are expected through the doors before spring. Work on the £45.8m scheme is nearing completion, with the occupants confirmed for eight of the development’s nine units having spent the final weeks of 2024 fitting out their premises.

Preston City Council will be hoping the line-up of an eight-screen Arc Cinema and Hollywood Bowl, along with eateries Loungers, Cosmo, Las Iguanas, Ask Italian and Taco Bell – and a clutch of independently-run ‘street food’ outlets and a cocktail bar – will prove an attractive proposition to locals and folk from further afield.    The operator of a competitive games outlet planned for the site has yet to be found.

Elsewhere, the authority will also be focussed on the long-awaited reopening of the Harris Museum.   The much-loved attraction closed in October 2021 for what was expected to be a three-year shutdown for a major refurbishment to turn it into the country’s first ‘blended’ museum, art gallery and library.

However, the original timeframe slipped as a result of complications including the discovery of more asbestos than had been expected – and the latest estimated date for the venue’s return to the city’s cultural scene is next summer.  The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) understands work on installing the museum’s displays will begin early in the new year.

Meanwhile, Preston will also finally get its Youth Zone – more than a decade after the idea was first mooted.  Construction work is well under way on the charity-run facility – to be known as The Vault – and as the LDRS has previously revealed, it is expected to open in the autumn, when it will offer members a raft of creative and sporting activities from its base opposite the bus station.

With a fair wind, the new ‘Old Tram Bridge’ will also be open before the year is out, with the most optimistic date for the re-establishment of the cross-river connection between Avenham Park and Penwortham being next December.  Work has stopped for the winter months, but will restart in the spring ahead of the bridge being lifted into place – in what promises to be an eye-catching operation – sometime in the autumn. While contractors are off site, the pedestrian route along Old Tram Road will temporarily reopen before closing again until the completion of the project.

Reflecting on the year gone by and the 12 months ahead, Preston City Council’s cabinet member for community wealth building and city regeneration, Valerie Wise, said:  “Christmas came just in time for us to just stop for a minute and take a quick breath.

“2024 has been incredibly busy with some amazing milestones already achieved and a phenomenal amount of redevelopment work carried out in the city, led by both the public and private sector.

“We will be straight back into it in January as we put our foot on the gas even more so, as we gear up for our big openings and transformational projects such as Animate, The Harris, The Vault – and not forgetting a new tram bridge, improvements to the pedestrianised city centre, works commencing on the Grade II-listed Amounderness House.  The list goes on and on.”

COMING ALIVE IN 2025

The Amounderness House project is set to begin in the spring and will see Preston’s former magistrates’ court building brought back to life as an office and flexible workspace hub.  After more than two decades standing idle, the landmark building – which borders Lancaster Road, Earl Street and Birley Street – will also become home to several retail units.

The first phase of the ‘Illuminate and Integrate’ lighting and public space project – designed to make Preston’s cultural and market quarters a more appealing place, especially after dark – will be complete by the end of January.   The improvements currently being made to Old Vicarage and the junction of Tithebarn Street, Ormskirk Road and Carlisle Street will pave the way for phase two – initially focusing on Lancaster Road – to begin by early spring.

Meanwhile, following the completion last year of the pedestrianisation of Friargate North, 2025 will see an upgrade to the rundown public realm in and around Friargate South.  The improvement work – due to start early in the new year – will extend from the new pedestrian and cycle-friendly junction with Ringway all the way up Cheapside and the Flag Market.

The changes will result in a refreshed thoroughfare with new benches, cycle paths, tree planting and other landscaping all being out in place.

As one of the projects being funded by the city’s £20m allocation from the Levelling Up Fund, the scheme has received a cash boost after the cancellation earlier this year of controversial plans for new sporting facilities on Ashton Park.   The budget for the Friargate South work has been given a £1.1m top-up, taking it to £3m – and enabling improvements also to be made to Orchard Street, through to the market quarter.

The remaining park-based levelling up projects – which, subject to planning permission, will see revamps of Moor Park, Waverley Park and Grange Park – are also set to be undertaken in 2025.

Under the same ‘Active Preston’ umbrella, work on a new segregated cycle lane – running for 700 metres along Queen Street and Avenham Lane – will begin before Easter. The aim is to encourage more bike-riding along that east-west corridor through the city, which services the likes of Cardinal Newman College and Queens Shopping Park.

Finally, Preston’s nine freshly refurbished red phone boxes will return to their rightful place on Market Street in the spring – ready for a new life as art installations – after a spruce up currently being carried out by a specialist contractor across the other side of the Pennines.