Eureka! occupy a large town centre site in Halifax including three Grade II listed buildings – one of which is the old Halifax Train Station building. These buildings and the site represent a key part of the railway heritage story of Halifax. Two of the buildings, The Grade II listed Great North Shed and Shaw Sykes Good Yard are disused and in a state of severe dilapidation. They currently present a huge financial liability on the charity.
In 2016 we undertook an earlier piece of work for the local authority on a masterplan for the redevelopment of Halifax Train Station which lies partly on the land with Eureka! Current lease. This involved dialogue with Network Rail on the future of the existing station building and platform and the way a new station building, and approach could be configured.
This study for Eureka! examined through several pieces of work how these liabilities might be turned into assets for the betterment of Eureka! and the safeguarding of Halifax’s railway heritage. We prepared a Conservation Management Plan, appraised the site, its buildings and the impacts of developments on surrounding land and devised a masterplan of how the museum could decant from the existing building, which was in need of significant investment, into the historical assets over a period of 10 years and how the existing building might either be repurposed as an expanded museum offer or demolished to be replaced with a new interpretive landscape.