Faverdale Business Park, Darlington

Faverdale Business Park is located to the west of Darlington town centre and comprises a total of 35 ha (86.5 acres) of land zoned for employment creation.

Working in partnership with Darlington Borough Council, who own the site, via a joint venture agreement, ONE has invested £1,265,000 of Single Programme Funding via Tees Valley Partnership.  This investment provides primary site servicing and infrastructure to open up a Phase 1 site of 7.65 ha (18.9 acres) for immediate development and to provide a primary access point to facilitate opening up of the remainder of the site.

The site servicing project will complete in July 2005 and Darlington Borough Council have appointed Easter Developments Ltd as preferred developer for the Phase 1 site.  Easter Developments will shortly commence the development of 100,000 sq ft of speculative high quality industrial accommodation with a programme of further complementary development in future years.  Initial investment by Easter Developments will be c £4.7 million.

The Faverdale location was identified by Argos Ltd as an ideal location for the site of a major regional distribution and call centre of c 750,000 sq ft. The Phase 1 infrastructure works will allow access to the Phase 2 land acquired by Argos who are currently on site undertaking development of the distribution centre. On completion, it is anticipated that around 650 new jobs will be created by Argos who will be investing c £30million in total.