IN Brief:
- Esh Construction has completed Sheepfolds public realm and Riverside Park works in Sunderland.
- The projects improve pedestrian links, green space, biodiversity, and access across the Riverside Sunderland masterplan.
- The contractor says £2.5m has been reinvested into the local economy through supply chain spending.
Esh Construction has completed two major projects for Sunderland City Council, marking further progress in the Riverside Sunderland regeneration programme.
The contractor has delivered the Sheepfolds public realm scheme around the Stadium of Light and Sheepfolds Stables, alongside work at Riverside Park, where the Southern Gateway and Kingsley Gardens have been transformed. Both projects support the wider masterplan by improving connectivity, public space, green infrastructure, and access between key development areas.
At Sheepfolds, the works have created upgraded pedestrian infrastructure and stronger links between the city centre, the Stadium of Light, Sheepfolds Stables, Keel Square, and the wider regeneration area. A central feature is a new pedestrian overpass built above the site’s historic cobbled wagonway, allowing the former industrial route to be retained while being integrated into a modern accessible thoroughfare.
The project has also delivered enhanced walking and cycling routes, natural stone paving, trees, landscaping, and sustainable urban drainage systems. The site was temporarily opened during the summer to support crowds attending the 2026 Women’s Rugby World Cup, giving visitors an early view of the improved public realm.
At Riverside Park, Esh has completed works at the Southern Gateway and Kingsley Gardens. The Southern Gateway connects the Farringdon Row neighbourhood and Riverside multi-storey car park with the new Sunderland Strategic Eye Hospital, the Vaux housing development, and the central business district.
The park works include a new entrance, landscaped areas, ponds, and social spaces intended to improve biodiversity and public use. Kingsley Gardens has been developed as a community growing space, adding a health, wellbeing, and social-use element to the wider park.
With both sites handed back to Sunderland City Council, final activity is focused on preparing the new spaces for public use in the coming weeks. Their completion gives the regeneration programme more of the connective infrastructure needed to support housing, healthcare, leisure, business space, and public movement across the riverside.
Public realm and green infrastructure now carry a much larger role in regeneration delivery. Riverside Sunderland is not being built as a sequence of isolated plots; its success depends on whether homes, healthcare, leisure, business space, transport routes, green space, and civic destinations are connected well enough to function as a coherent urban district.
The same delivery pattern can be seen elsewhere in the North East. Esh’s recent work at Stockton Waterfront combined civil engineering, public realm, highways, landscape, and placemaking around a major town-centre intervention, using green space and infrastructure to reconnect central areas with underused riverside land.
Sunderland is pursuing a comparable but larger city-centre strategy. The Riverside Sunderland masterplan is expected to bring new homes, leisure, commercial space, the national esports arena, healthcare assets, and public realm together over several phases. Progress at Sunniside, where regeneration planning has been advanced with Muse, also shows how the city is structuring delivery across multiple neighbourhoods rather than relying on a single flagship site.
Public realm delivery can look straightforward once complete, but it often involves difficult engineering and coordination. Drainage, utilities, levels, retaining structures, surfacing, heritage features, planting, lighting, access, event use, maintenance, and temporary pedestrian routes all need to be resolved before a space can perform properly.
The integration of sustainable drainage and biodiversity measures adds long-term environmental value, but it also requires careful design and maintenance planning. Landscaped public spaces only support regeneration when they remain attractive, safe, and usable after the construction team has left site.
Esh says the projects have reinvested £2.5m into the local economy through supply chain spending. Two Sunderland apprentices worked across the schemes, and the project team supported a council-led Riverside clean-up initiative. Donations were also made to Expo Sunderland, Hopewood Park, and children’s charity Love, Amelia.
The completion of the Sheepfolds and Riverside Park works gives Sunderland another piece of the infrastructure needed to support long-term regeneration. Homes, hospitals, leisure venues, and commercial buildings need connected public space around them to generate value beyond individual plots. The latest handovers move sections of the riverside from development land into functioning city fabric.
