Sheffield's changing cityscape: The regeneration of Kelham Island

A five minute walk from the Shalesmoor tram stop, to pay it a visit is to be struck at the same time by continuity and change. The types of buildings here are still much as they would have been when factory workers walked these streets going to and from work. One building after another has its red brick walls. Every so often a building opens onto the street and the yards behind it come into view. It was here that the raw materials that fuelled production here were delivered. These were then made into products that would then leave the same yards destined for the shops of Sheffield and beyond.

The Kelham Island of today is still home to a few workshops. On a walk through its streets in the afternoon, the sound of a machine cutting through metal or hammers hitting soon-to-be finished goods are common. The difference today is that these factories are no longer the only businesses calling Kelham Island home.

The workshops have new neighbours. On street after street bars, cafes, restaurants and shops are housed in former factories. Many more stand empty bearing 'To Let' signs which promote scores of feet of office and business space to potential renters. One such factory is now called ‘The Works’ and is home to a cafe.

Kelham Island has found itself in a city in the midst of change. Under the label 'Regeneration', swathes of Sheffield are being transformed. Some places which the city’s residents know well are now disappearing and making way for new developments. Others are being turned over from one purpose to another. Still more are getting a new look and style or as some people view it a much-needed update.

But there are two sides to the story of Sheffield’s regeneration. To some it is a welcome sign that the city is continuing to move forward as new life is breathed through its streets into buildings that were regarded as past their best, giving them a new lease of life. Buildings and areas once regarded as eyesores and derelict are now bustling centres of business, leisure and culture; providing homes and jobs to the city’s inhabitants.

Others look at what is happening and see the spectre of ‘Gentrification’ rising from the foundations of these new sites. They worry these new developments are merely pushing people out of buildings and areas where they live and earn a living to make way for homes and businesses that are beyond their means.

The changes to some are an opportunity. To others, a threat. Regeneration is now a familiar sight in cities up and down the country as they undertake the long march from post-industrial decline to reinventing themselves. At the same time, concerns over gentrification continue to linger and in the case of the Grenfell Tower fire, often make the headlines and expose stark social and economic divisions within communities.

As the building work rumbles on with no sign of slowing, the inner workings of the drive to regenerate seem ripe for examination. Before looking at Kelham Island more closely, let us examine the background of Sheffield's latest spurt in the redevelopment of its industrial areas.

Sheffield's industry remained active until after the Second World War. Between 50’s and 70’s Sheffield enjoyed nearly full employment and unemployment rates remained below the national average.

Sheffield’s fortunes altered drastically with the coming of the economic malaise of the 1970’s. Inflation, a rise in oil prices and increasing competition from overseas hampered steel making and other industry in the city. A lack of service businesses only made matters worse, and by 1981 over one in ten of the city’s workers was without a job as factories closed their doors. Almost half of the city’s workers had jobs in factories in 1971. By 1984, that figure was down to just under a quarter.

Kelham Island was home to many factories that produced goods made from the steel forged in Sheffield. Iron works and cutlery factories turned the raw steel into all kinds of products that sold all over the country and the world. When Sheffield’s steel industry began to decline, the effects were felt in the factories and workshops of Kelham and they started to fall with it.

The council attempted to deal with rising unemployment by creating the Department for Employment and Economic Development (DEED) in 1981. The DEED sponsored the founding of small scale businesses and created the Cultural Industries Quarter (CIQ) which still exists today. The body was unable to attract enough money from private investors and in 1988 the central government handed responsibility for regeneration over to the Sheffield Development Corporation (SDC).

The DEED’s planning powers were granted to the SDC which moved the focus of development over to the city’s former industrial heartland in the Lower Don Valley. Kelham Island missed out on much of this early regeneration as a result.

Kelham Island has become home to several new businesses in the last five to ten years. They have opened shop in buildings that once housed the factories and workshops that built the area and redeveloping them to meet their needs. One such business can be found at 92 Burton Road, the home of the Kelham Arcade. The arcade took its lease on 1 August last year, making it one of the newer businesses to open here. The first shops began to open in its units from October.

It is housed in what was once a spring factory, and from the outside it is hard to believe that the arcade is home to nine units which include a tattoo shop, an architects' office and a photography studio. Lawrence Wheen, 33, is the arcade’s director. He sat looking out of the window at the street and neighbouring buildings in the Kelham Barber shop at the front of the arcade, with his dog Roxy at his feet.

"It was pretty run down when we moved in," he said. “When we first moved in the upstairs was pretty shot.”

“But I think the industrial feel adds to it. They're keeping that kind of look with the other buildings. It’s a mix of old and new which is pretty cool.”

He added Kelham Island seemed like a great area to base an arcade in and that the area looks to be coming together now.

“It’s got a nice community feel. Businesses have moved in and our footfall’s nearly there now. We get on with our neighbours a lot too and we’re hoping eventually to bring the ones round here under a 92 Burton Road banner.”

Out in the yard next door there were the businesses he was talking about, like the Depot Bakery and Sheffield Cheesemakers.

“You get a different type of person down here. It’s not the same as going to West Street or the city centre. Our clientele’s mostly 20’s up, they’re quite a trendy crowd.”

“I’m proud to be part of it, it’s a great area. It’s got a good vibe. It’s exciting!”

He added he hoped the businesses in the area would work to build it together. The affection he has for Kelham Island does not only extent as far as the fortunes of his business. He said he has memories of the place from when he was growing up and can still recall live here before the new businesses moved in.

“My parents have been taking me to the Fat Cat pub since I was in nappies so I remember what Kelham was like before. It was just a few craft pubs and working girls.”

“But since about ten years ago they have been pushing Kelham Island as the new spot in Sheffield. Though that slowed down a bit in the recession.”

“When we were starting this place and looking for a spot one of my mates told me about the area and I thought: 'There’s nothing down in Kelham.' But my mate said: 'Just come and have a look, the place is changing.'”

The conversation turned to whether he sees Kelham Island becoming gentrified. He disagreed and said it’s more a case of regeneration and that’s something he’s happy to be a part of.

“I think gentrification is more about pushing people out. If anything the new places opening here are going to bring more people in.”

“The factories still here might see it as gentrification. All these businesses like us are moving in and they might feel pushed out. That’s one of things that worried me when we first started but it doesn’t seem to be a problem from what I can tell.”

He added that residents and the people in Kelham Island he knows have welcomed the changes brought with the new businesses opening. He says that from his experience those moving businesses into the area are doing it with little money.

"There's another bar opening down there," he said, pointing through the window down one of the streets outside. “I know the people opening it. They’re doing it on a budget.”

“It’s not like new money’s moving into a cool area. There was nothing here. It’s definitely more regeneration than gentrification.”

“I think if someone put a Starbucks down here it wouldn’t really work.”

The variety of shops is evident as we walk through the arcade. Lawrence says the idea was to put shops together that complement each other.

“We thought it would work well to put the barber’s and the tattoo shop next door so people could go to one and then the other.”

Jodie Davison, 28, is from Sheffield and owns one of the shops, the Nature of the Beast. She sells art work, vintage and retro curiosities, antiques and even some taxidermied animals. She opened the shop in May. Sat behind the counter, she said she decided to open it when she heard it was one of the last units left available in the arcade.

“I love the area,” she said, “that’s one of the main reasons I came here. I knew it was the sort of area to start my business. I’ve got a great feeling about how it’s all going to turn out.”

She added she hopes the area will become something similar to Manchester’s Northern Quarter, which she thinks is what Sheffield needs.

“I think it’s giving it a new lease of life. I studied archaeology so anything that’s old and has some heritage appeals to me.”

Lawrence said he was also optimistic about Kelham Island’s future. He added that he was happy to see other businesses like his continue to move in.

“In the next five years it’s going to be really good. The new businesses coming will bring competition, but I’m not going to look at it like that. The more stuff that opens here the more people will come. Unless they open a barbers’ shop. Then it’s competition!”

A few minutes' walk from the Kelham Arcade, up Ball Street heading back towards the city, is the Kelham Island Arts Collective. The collective houses studios and a gallery and has been in a building that was once used for NVQ training since April 2011.

John Wilkinson is one of the collective's directors and an artist there. He is originally from London and moved to Sheffield in 1990. As he showed me around he said the artists built all the interior walls with whatever they could find. We sat down in his own studio space surrounded by his paintings. He said making a living as an artist is hard work and money must be spent wisely on the space the collective bases itself in.

"We’re in the industrial hinterland here and its somewhere artists can afford to rent. Rent here’s about a sixth of what it is in the redeveloped areas."

He said Kelham Island was one of the first places he visited when he came to the city.

“I walked around it when I got to Sheffield in 1990. The area was untouched by regeneration then. It missed out on funding and Kelham Island stayed as it was.”

“Regeneration’s something that’s happened in the last four or five years. Now it’s full of redeveloped buildings.”

When asked whether he felt Kelham Island was being gentrified, he said the place is “gentrification city.”

“It stinks! The cynic in me says that’s for the benefit of people who believe in and profit from the economic philosophy of the market.”

“This wasn’t a hugely residential area. Most buildings here were factories. But the regeneration here’s got a lot to do with the way the city has gone in the last 40 years.”

He added he believes regeneration should concentrate more on getting people back into work. He said from his experience working for trade unions in the past factory jobs are the one’s sought after.

“The jobs market is very much low wage now for a lot of people. Those people want jobs on the factory floor like the generations before them. They want to do work that gives them identity and purpose.”

“So regeneration should be about addressing those concerns. To provide housing for people who just want somewhere trendy to live isn’t going to address that.”

Gesturing around his studio space, he says much of his work takes inspiration from those kinds of issues.

“Look around you! Most of my work is about deindustrialisation and the impact on communities. It’s a human response to a human condition.”

He pointed out one painting in particular, hung on the wall behind his desk.

“That one’s called 'The encroaching threat of modernity.’ The skyline in it’s London, but I was commenting on the way all these old buildings get pulled down as skyscrapers get built on top of them.”

"All I can do as an artist is try to show that to people and hope they look."

One of the collective's ongoing projects is the painting of cab boxes in Kelham Island with street art. Sheffield City Council has been keen to encourage Street or 'public’ art as something to help bring character to the area and help with its regeneration. John said he sees it as an antidote to graffiti.

He added his concerns about gentrification are not only motivated by his art and experiences. He said the future of the Kelham Island Art Collective itself is threatened by it.

“Our lease runs out next February. We’ll then have to renegotiate with the land lord. If they decide they could make more money by renting this place to a cafe or business then there’s not much we can do about that.”

Kelham Island's redevelopment is far from over. Sheffield City Council have made it subject to a 'Kelham and Neepsend Action Plan’ which is due to run until 2018, having begun in 2008. The plans stress the goal of keeping much of the area’s buildings as they are and encouraging their reuse and restoration. It also highlights the need to create commercial spaces there to allow for ongoing business development.

The plan points out that the majority of sites in the Riverside area of Kelham Island have been approved for residential development. It states that proposals for what it calls "large-scale and single-use residential developments" will generally be resisted. The plan provides exemptions to this and these are if such redevelopment would help to preserve historic buildings.

The plan goes so far as to detail the preferred kinds of materials to be used in new developments. Brick, stone and slate are preferred whilst steel, glass and wooden cladding should be used “sensitively”.

Kelham Island was made an Industrial Conservation Area in 1985. The plan states that because of this any listed or ‘character’ buildings should be kept and reused “wherever practical”. Any new buildings that go up alongside these will be required to be “sensitive to their location”.

The plan also outlines the council’s role in bringing visitors and tourists to the area. This will include the promotion of the Kelham Island museum, the creation of heritage walks and backing for festivals and markets.

The plan is largely a guideline and gives direction to how the council should deal with those redeveloping Kelham Island. Yunas Ahmed is team manager at the Sheffield Regeneration division of Sheffield City Council. He said the council had little involvement in each case of regeneration and that the market had taken the lead. He added Kelham Island was so far a “success story.”

“I think the area’s doing quite well. It’s flourishing. If you look back over the last three to six years it was a case of declining industry firms. Kelham Island was looking a bit sorry for itself. The market has stepped in there and now it’s a successful area.”

He said the council hoped to see more of the same in future. When asked about the area becoming gentrified he said that was a concern for the council, both in Kelham and across the city.

"We've got big chains moving in and there’s little we can do about that. I think if we try and make the effort to spend money in local, independent shops then that’s a way to resist it. But that’s the reality. Gentrification is happening and we try and do what we can."

He added gentrification seemed to be happening less in Sheffield when compared to other cities.

“Gentrification’s happening everywhere from London to Manchester and even in Sheffield. All the developers are interested in is the bottom line. But it doesn’t seem to have been as extreme here as it has been in places like Manchester or London.”

A visit to Kelham Island shows the area is still undergoing a process of regeneration that has been gathering pace for years. It is a process that will likely carry on for years to come. The old factory buildings still stand and if Sheffield City Council's plans are followed through they won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Now their purpose is changing like many areas of Sheffield as the city comes to terms with its loss of its industry and the passage of time.