Baltic Business Quarter, the hub of Gateshead's rapidly growing business district, has unveiled plans to expand the scheme with the introduction of opportunities to develop a hotel, children's nursery and coffee shop on the site. Terrace Hill Group, the scheme's developers, has outline consent for each of these uses at the site and is now seeking high quality proposals from both regional and national operators.
 ))
Baltimore House in the Baltic Business Quarter.
The announcement of the planned new additions start off another exciting year at the increasingly popular business quarter which, just a month ago, submitted proposals to build The Design Centre North, intended as a focal point for promoting regional design companies .
The business quarter's first occupier, Gateshead College, was quickly followed by the news that the Open University would be relocating its regional headquarters to the scheme in October 2008. Some 70 university staff are now based there, supporting 550 lecturers and more than 12,000 students. The latest confirmed arrival to Baltic is energy provider npower, which, in the largest letting in the region for over five years, will soon be occupying more than 100,000 ft² (approx. 9,260 m²) of space across three buildings.
Terrace Hill began works to create the 50-acre Baltic Business Quarter in partnership with Gateshead Council in October 2004. The ten-year program will see the development of 1.5 million ft² of offices with ancillary retail space, located in Gateshead's rapidly growing business district. Its out-of-town business park specification, set within an urban location, is continuing to attract good levels of interest from local, national and international occupiers and is expected to generate up to 7,000 new jobs when development works are completed.
With new occupiers in place, other infrastructure was also completed in 2008, including the installation of state of the art fiber optic cables through a partnership between Gateshead Council and Alcatel-Lucent designed to equip Baltic with a state of the art telecoms infrastructure through which it can support its tenants.
Martin Vickerman, Director at Terrace Hill Group, commented: "Interest in Baltic Business Quarter has grown at a phenomenal rate over the past year, with Gateshead College and the Open University moving into their buildings, npower taking new space and the establishment of key infrastructure works, which will really set this development and Gateshead as an office location apart from others.
"The proposed children's nursery, hotel and coffee shop will all add to Baltic's offering and provide existing and new tenants with additional key facilities that will undoubtedly be much in demand. Local attractions in the Quays area, such as the Baltic and The Sage Gateshead are also expected to generate interest for the proposed hotel. We are now welcoming approaches from interested operators and look forward to announcing the latest additions to the Baltic Business Quarter in due course."
Sheila Johnston, Director of Development and Enterprise for Gateshead Council, added, "These are important components in the Baltic Business Quarter developmen
