WHILE York continues its decade-long debate over the prospect of a revamped town centre at Coppergate, Shepherd Construction of York has just secured a £12.5 million deal to give Loughborough town centre a facelift.

Work has now begun on the nearly 300,000 sq ft development in Leicestershire and by the time it is completed in summer 2003 there will be an underground car park for 434 vehicles, shop units, a health and fitness club with indoor swimming pool, theme pubs, bars and restaurants plus 33 one and two-bedroom luxury apartments.

Tenants will include LA Fitness, JJB Sports and Woolworth, which will operate as "Big W" in a 75,000 sq ft shopping area which will feature a garden centre.

The development, in an area of regeneration in Loughborough, is expected to provide hundreds of new jobs .

The contract adds to some £250 million worth of construction carried out by Shepherd for the leisure and retail industries over the past three years, much of it in city centres, such as an £11.5 million new Epsom town centre completed last November.

Meanwhile the inquiry into Land Securities' plan for a £60 million Coppergate Centre extension goes on, with the planning inquiry resuming in May.

...And as the Loughborough Town Centre project begins for Shepherd Construction, a £4.5 million project has just come to an end for its sister company York-based Shepherd Engineering Services.

The work entailed installing and commissioning the mechanical and electrical services to the Natural History Museum's new £17 million, seven-storey Darwin Centre (pictured left) in London due to open in September.

Visitors to the new centre will be able to see for the first time the museum's £22 million zoological spirit collection of soft-bodied specimens and learn about the cutting-edge scientific research they support.

It represented a huge technical challenge to the York company which had to design dedicated large cold storage areas for the specimens known as the 'Spirit Stores'.

The firm also supplied the power and controls for an all-glass solar wall in which electronic sensors in the louvres track the movement of the sun, giving the building an "intelligent skin" which then adjusts the louvres according to the time and weather.

Updated: 10:12 Tuesday, February 26, 2002