£200,000 Hartlepool town centre takeaway revamp gets the go-ahead

The plans are for 15 Church Street, Hartlepool - which was previously the site of Mamma Mia’s takeaway and residential flats - and is joined on to the former Shades site.

Hartlepool Borough Council bosses acquired the property in August last year and now aim to renovate the site, with the ground floor becoming a shop or cafe, dependent on market demand.

The upper floors will also be renovated and offer two flats.

Councillors on the finance and policy committee unanimously approved the plans earlier this month.

The project will be paid for with £73,000 in grant funding, and £134,000 of borrowing, which would be recouped from income from shop and flat rents.

A full meeting of Hartlepool Borough Council has now given final approval for the project to go ahead.

Coun Kevin Cranney, council chair of regeneration services committee, said: “One of our targets for the regeneration of Church Street was to turn around the business growth from that area.

“One of the highest priorities, as everybody knows was Shades, which used to be a beautiful architectural building and it was top of the priority list.

“The majority of the money has been secured from outside of the town to do that and this has been built on business cases.

“We will ensure that any business down there will be in keeping with our ambitions for that area of the town.”

Coun James Black raised concerns over the investment but agreed improvement needs to be made around Church Street.

He said: “I believe it’s a lot of money to risk on a residential and commercial property. There are a number of places on Church Street which are empty including residential and commercial premises.

“I agree that we need to improve this quarter, I agree that we need to ignite interest, but I wish we weren’t putting all our eggs in one basket.”

Andrew Carter, assistant director for economic growth and regeneration at the council, previously said they would be looking towards the end of the year when work would start on the project.

He added the site will not be let as a hot food takeaway as it would be ‘detrimental to the letting and management of the flats’.