While the eyes of the retail world were on Whiteley in Hampshire a couple of weeks ago, another new shopping centre was opening 300 miles north.

While the eyes of the retail world were on Whiteley in Hampshire a couple of weeks ago, another new shopping centre was opening 300 miles north.

Trinity Square in Gateshead - the town where I live and work - may not have the national profile of Whiteley, or the glamour of similarly named Trinity Leeds. For a smallish town centre like Gateshead, though, the scheme’s £150m investment is transformational.

Gateshead town centre is never going to compete with Metrocentre, 10 minutes’ drive away, or with Newcastle city centre just a mile over the river - but then it’s not trying to.

Trinity Square, like the existing streets that it connects with, is more about building a destination for local shoppers, focused on value and convenience. Costa, CeX and Sports Direct are all new names to the town centre, while the relocation of others is a vote of confidence in Gateshead, hopefully creating space for smaller and independent retailers to grow.

And who’s behind the project? Not a traditional developer, but Spenhill, the regeneration arm of Tesco.

Unsurprisingly, a 103,000 sq ft Tesco Extra is the centrepiece of the scheme, but it couldn’t be further from the featureless box surrounded by parking that you might imagine.

The store faces a new public square, joined by 35 other shop and restaurant units and a multi-screen cinema, with a 750-space car park underneath. Cannily, the scheme will later have a ready-made supply of customers as 1,000 students move into accommodation blocks above the Tesco store.

Having toured 400 UK high streets recently - some thriving, some imperilled, and many just bumping along - I realise how lucky Gateshead is. Famous for its Millennium Bridge, Sage concert hall and Baltic gallery, the town has a modern and attractive centre to match its cultural assets.

Of course, not everywhere can secure investment on this scale. But through a scheme that knits together retail, leisure and residential uses with appealing public spaces, Gateshead offers inspiration for what our reinvented future high streets might look like.

  • Graham Soult, Retail consultant, CannyInsights.com