Burges Salmon has advised the current Hong Kong-based owners of the former Redruth Brewery site on the sale of part of the site for the proposed new archive centre for Cornwall, 'Kresen Kernow'.
Kresen Kernow is an ambitious, £15 million lottery and council funded project to build a new public facility which will renovate some of the historically important buildings on the site. Once opened in 2017, the new archive which will bring together the collections of Cornwall Record Office, the Cornish Studies Library and Cornwall and Scilly Historic Environment Record, to form the biggest collection of information for studying Cornwall’s people, places, history and culture. The collections contain documents, books, records, maps, photographs and databases, and date from 1150 to the present day.
Alongside the new archive centre, the remainder of the former Brewery site will be transformed by the Hong Kong based landowners with a landmark mixed-use regeneration project, providing new homes as well as offices, workspaces and retail units. To ensure this project meets the needs of the local community, the landowners participated in three rounds of public consultations over three years. The new 'Brewery Quarter' that the landowners plan to create takes on board this input and will have at its heart a new public open space called 'Hong Kong Cornwall Square' – a vibrant space that will include a microbrewery that will revive the historic brewery brands back into the site. The residential and commercial development surrounding the new square will be a showcase for 'green development'. The landowners will also be making a significant contribution to the £3.5 million flood mitigation and public realm works which will serve both sites and which are likely to start in early summer this year.
A team of Real Estate specialists from Burges Salmon, led by partner Philip Beer, advised the Hong Kong based investors who own the Redruth Brewery site. Philip said: “We are delighted to be a part of this project which will see huge investment over the coming years from Hong Kong into this part of Cornwall. We are seeing increasing demand from our clients based in the Far East for development opportunities outside central London. This is an amazing opportunity and the project will breathe new life into Redruth and create a vibrant new destination for Cornwall.”