Thirteen – Touchpoint

Description

The project aimed to provide Thirteen Group with an opportunity to serve their customers in a new way, from a centralised location on Stockton High Street whilst bringing much needed regeneration to the area. The new welcoming facility is where existing and future customers can engage with Thirteen face to face, with meeting room facilities and IT bar to the back of house areas, along with a tea point and small children’s play area.

Thirteen’s high-level requirements are:

· To make us more accessible to a wider customer base

· To engage us in a retail environment and enable us to advertise and cross sell the wider benefits to our customers of everything we have to offer

· A social space that can be adapted by day and night to make us a collaborator of community events and space

· A space that reflects family life as buying a house should be an experience that embraces people from all aspects of our communities

· An engaging digital space that enables efficient business delivery and networking with partners

· A modern, vibrant space that is retail orientated and can see us compete with private companies such as estate agents and letting agents.

· A hub for employability and training across Tees Valley

Identity Consult formed a team including GT3 Architects, TGA Consulting Engineers and Billinghurst George & Partners on this project, utilising the team that successfully delivered the Hudson Quay office facility, also for Thirteen Group towards the end of 2019.

The building had stood empty for many years, so the re-development was challenging due to the deteriorated condition of some of the building fabric, which required careful consideration as to the most appropriate route to bring it back into working condition. Some of the main project challenges included the presence of dry and wet rot within the existing timber floor, the poor condition of the existing drainage system as well as being positioned in a busy high street location. It is hoped the prominent location on the corner to Wellington Square will spur further regeneration of Stockton High Street by upgrading the quality of service offerings in the area.

Key Property Solutions were the main contractor and achieved project completion in June 2020. KPS managed to pro-actively progress the project despite issues caused by COVID-19, by implementing health and wellbeing measures and achieving handover with minimal delay.