Published at 09:43, Friday, 30 July 2010

TO some, it’s a cultural icon – to others, simply an eyesore. Either way, Thompsons of Prudhoe began tearing it down this week.

You’re a big building...but you’re out of shape: The Trinity Square car park in Gateshead was hailed as a classic example of 1960s Brutalism. In fact it became best-known for Get Carter with Michael Caine, inset, and for being one of the ugliest buildings in the country. Now Thompsons of Prudhoe are tearing it down.

Gateshead’s Trinity Square car park – made famous by the 1971 Michael Caine film Get Carter – is being demolished to make way for a redevelopment scheme.

The structure, which dates back to the Sixties, is 38 metres tall and consists of 13 levels.

As Thompsons’ joint managing director, John Thompson Jnr, explained, that equates to a lot of hard and intricate work for his company in the coming weeks.

“It’s probably going to take us about eight weeks to get the structure down and a further six to get it off site – we’re talking about roughly 50,000 tonnes of concrete,” he said.

“We’ve got two specialist high rise machines on it, which work in tandem.

“They’ve each got attachments that look like pairs of scissors.

“We call them concrete pulverisers and they will squeeze together the concrete to break it down into very small pieces.”

Mr Thompson added that he had been involved in preparations for the car park's demolition for the past five years, and that careful methods laid out by a structural engineer would be employed.

“The last thing we want is for anything to collapse in any shape or form,” he said.

“We want to take it down gradually, without any great big chunks coming down.”

The iconic car park was designed by architect Owen Luder, and opened in 1969.

In Get Carter, Michael Caine’s London gangster character is given a tour of a roof top cafe on the site by corrupt businessman Cliff Brumby.

Famously, Carter later throws Brumby from the same location.

The site now looks set for a £150 million redevelopment, including shops, offices and flats, after Spenhill, the regeneration arm of Tesco, submitted a planning application to Gateshead Council.

“Demolition always attracts a lot of attention and we get our fair share of publicity around the North East,” Mr Thompson said.

“But this one has attracted more than other projects because of the connection with Michael Caine.”

He added, however: “It’s one of two buildings in the North East that were listed as being among the UK’s ten worst building structures. The other one was Westgate House near Central Station and we took that down three years ago.”

The high profile work comes at a challenging time for Thompsons, which has given 80 of its 340 staff notice of possible redundancy.

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk