Faber building set for medical reboot
Plans to create a dedicated blood donation centre on the ground floor at the L&G-backed Riverside Sunderland office development have been approved by Sunderland City Council.
The centre is expected to collect blood donations from dozens of people each day, providing vital blood components for use in life-saving medical treatments.
Applicant Sunderland Vaux 1 said the scheme would strengthen regional healthcare infrastructure and support essential medical treatment in the area.
Visitors are expected to spend between 20 and 90 minutes at the centre, with the facility designed to accommodate up to 56 people at any one time during peak periods.
The proposal is intended to operate as a car-free development, with visitors and staff able to use nearby public car parks.
In approving the plans, council planners said the impact of the development on residential and visual amenity, as well as highway and pedestrian safety, would be acceptable.
Other occupants include the Department for Work and Pensions, which recently announced it will relocate its team from Wear View House from April 2027.
The Maker & Faber buildings sit behind the council’s home on Plater Way, at the heart of the city’s regeneration scheme, which is being led by the council and is set to deliver 1m sq ft of office space in Sunderland city centre.
Designed by Ryder, the buildings are the only speculative grade A office development on the market in the region at this time. As of April last year, the two towers had delivered 157,000 sq ft of grade A space into a sparsely populated market, making up a large chunk of the 350,000 sq ft of newly built office space available in the UK outside of London.
