Green light for £23m Wrexham Business Gateway funding
Hailed as the flagship of Wrexham University’s Campus 2030 vision, the student union and start-up incubator hub is set for a September 2028 opening – nearly a decade after it received outline planning permission.
Ambition North Wales has approved the £22.9m outline business case for Wrexham Business Gateway.
The building will be host to the university’s business school, with space for students and businesses to collaborate. The university described its function as a civic and economic hub at the campus, with the gateway acting as an enhancement of Business Wales’ existing offering to support entrepreneurs and SMEs.
“The Wrexham Business Gateway is more than a building – it’s a platform for transformation,” said Professor Joe Yates, vice-chancellor of Wrexham University.
“It represents our ambition to connect education with enterprise and opportunity, and to play a leading role in shaping a stronger, more innovative regional economy.”
Outline planning permission for the gateway building was granted in 2019. Designed by Day Architectural, it was known as Learning Gateway at the time.
Work is due to begin on the building next year, with the procurement for a two-stage pre-construction services agreement to start imminently.
Funding for the gateway building breaks down to more than £7m from the North Wales Growth Deal, £4m from the Flintshire and Wrexham Investment Zone, £1.5m from Welsh Government’s Medr, and match funding from the university itself.
Wrexham County Council Leader and chair of Ambition North Wales Cllr Mark Pritchard said: “The fact that this project will be enabled, by funding from both the Growth Deal and the Investment Zone really demonstrates our regional collaboration in action.
“By working closely with partners, projects such as the Business Gateway can move towards delivery and will benefit North Wales hugely.”
The project is due to create more than 130 jobs and contribute between £77m and £94m to the region’s economy, according to Ambition North Wales.
Cassidy + Ashton is currently working with the university on the project.
You can view the original planning permission by searching P/2018/0667 on Wrexham County Council’s planning portal. The original planning team included Narvo Asset Management, Integrated Transport Planning, Axis, and EDP.
Wrexham University’s Campus 2030 transformation has been delivered in phases since an outline application was submitted to the county council in 2018. The revamp of the Plas Coch campus has picked up steam over the past few years, with the development of 322 student beds underway and the building of the Enterprise Engineering and Optics Centre wrapping up last year.
Paul Moran, capital projects manager at Wrexham University, praised the EEOC building as an exemplar of what the university hopes to accomplish in its 2030 plan – noting that it was delivered with 40% lower embodied carbon, 30% biodiversity net gain, and brought in £6m of social value.
