Best mixed-use regeneration project

Need to organise an, ahem, quiet drink in a brewery? Countryside and its joint-venture partners Mansford Holdings and SA Brain and Co, plus architect Powell Dobson, can help. They transformed the landmark Brains Brewery, closed since 1999, into an £18m pleasuredome filled with restaurants, bars and nightclubs, as well as apartments and offices. Located a stone’s throw from the Millennium Stadium, the bustling food-and-drink quarter includes refurbished and new units. Two floors of pubs and eateries, some located inside the old brewery vaults, sit around a new piazza. Above them are four storeys containing 44 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. Two office buildings complete the development, which is reached via a newly pedestrianised street lined with even more watering holes. Cheers!

The former Brains Brewery is now an £18m entertainment quarter filled with pubs and eateries

Runners-up

Leeds’ Royal Armouries Museum gets 300,000 visitors a year. And it’ll get more when the 15-acre site that surrounds it morphs into a new docklands district. Work is well under way on the £125m, 10-year scheme: three of the nine phases are complete, three more are on site. By 2007, there will be 100,000 m2 of mixed-use space, a tram link and a bridge across the River Aire – all attracting residents and tourists to this formerly down-at-heel dock.

Forthquarter, Edinburgh – National Grid Property

The waterfront Granton gasworks, dormant since the 1960s, used to be a scar on the face of the Scottish capital. Now being constructed in its place is a £50m community masterplanned by Foster and Partners. Links with the past are maintained by a 10,000 m2 HQ for Scottish Gas, but there will also be 2000 homes, 15% of which are designated affordable or key-worker housing, a college campus, shops, 8 ha of open space and a recruitment centre.

Horsebridge and Brownings Yard, Kent – Clague architects

Canterbury council wanted new community facilities and to replace derelict buildings in Whitstable; West Beach Homes wanted to build homes. They got together and, thanks to Clague’s design, everyone got their wish. The £6m development, set around a new public square with bandstand, incorporates a council-run art gallery, community centre and performance space, 17 houses, 17 apartments, five shops and a restaurant.

Park Central, Birmingham – Gardner Stewart

The second city is not exactly over-stocked with green spaces, so it’s no bad thing that a clump of drab tower blocks in Attwood Green is being replaced by a new district wrapped around a park. The first phase, completed earlier this year, includes that 500 m long stretch of green, 5000 m2 of offices at a cost of £4.2m and 166 mixed-tenure homes at £14m. Once complete, Park Central will incorporate 1700 dwellings, 15,000 m2 of offices, a hotel and shops.

Tally Ho Corner, london – Ruddle Wilkinson

Tally Ho Corner used to be an open-air market. Now, a PPP deal between Barnet council, Taylor Woodrow and Chiltern Investment Properties is offering the punters an arts centre including two theatres, a residential tower, roof garden, shops, offices, a bus station, a health club and a car park on the tight 4850 m2 site. And all for just £40m, with the wider regeneration of Finchley High Street thrown in for free. You can’t say fairer than that, guv’nor.