Queen Street Masonic Temple’s new car park officially opens after six years of planning issues

Directors of the Queen Street Heritage Trust were joined by the Sunderland mayor and mayoress, as well as the leader of Sunderland City Council on Friday, August 27 for the official opening of their new car park.

It is the end of a six-year long effort that has seen issues with land ownership due to the area being named as a Heritage Action Zone (HAZ).

It all started when Tombola CEO Phil Cronin approached the temple with the idea to revamp the car park as he wanted to expand his business, prompting him to help fund the project throughout the planning and construction.

Robin Middleton, one of the directors at the Queen Street Heritage Trust at the masonic temple has revealed his pride at the end product.

He said: “It is good to see the fruition of all the work and effort Trust chairman Dave Dorward and secretary Paul Swansbury have put in over the last six years.

"No one imagined how good the improvement would be, not only to the temple but the surrounding area also.

"Throughout the construction process, so many people have passed the site and complimented how much it has changed for the wasteland that it was before.”

The leader of Sunderland City Council, Councillor Graeme Miller, spoke about that smaller projects such as building a new car park are all part of transforming the city.

He commented: “It should have taken less time than this but we’ve got here and we’ve got a really great brand new car park to support the large building and the local community.

"When we’re looking at transforming the city, it has to include local community little projects like this, this transforms this little bit of the east end.

"It makes it much nicer because the land here was in a terrible state before and we’ve cleaned it all up and now there is a functional car park that helps everybody and these little projects are just as important as bringing forward an eye infirmary.

"It’s taken a bit of time but sometimes, it is worth waiting for.”

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