White River Place was a £75 million scheme, part funded by the South West RDA, involving the renovation of a brownfield site into a stimulating town centre for St.Austell. It featured a mix of uses over seven floors including retail, catering, offices, cinema, a 550 space car park and nearly 70 residential units. Pedestrian linkage was incorporated in the design to encourage movement throughout the town centre.
As a major town centre site, liaison and community interaction and involvement were important in determining an urban design approach which would integrate the scheme into the existing town.
The development, initially targeted to achieve a BREEAM ‘very good’ rating, achieved both the ‘Excellent’ rating and the 2010 BREEAM Retail Award.
The team worked to attain all available credits towards this by maximising the materials credits with effective procurement, use of local labour and materials, effective use of water and rainwater harvesting, effective ecological input on a brownfield site, Parkmark compliance for the car parking and implementing environmental policies and management.
