00:00Lejade is fantastic. I mean if you'd been standing on this spot 50 years ago you would have been
00:05surrounded by silversmiths, by people working in traditional Sheffield manufacturing crafts
00:11in these little mesters workshops and today it's been transformed, Lejade, into a new home
00:19for independent retail and workspaces right in the heart of our city and it's the latest piece
00:27in the redevelopment of the city centre and a key part of the heart of the city development.
00:34It's a new home for making and creating very much keeping in the spirit of the creating that took
00:40place here but just updated for 2024 and with many years of success ahead of it I'm absolutely
00:47sure. This is a grade two listed building that has frankly been hiding in plain sight on Cambridge
00:54Street for many years and I think people would be really impressed when they walk through the
00:59gate to see what is here. The transformation that we've been able to do with the team here over the
01:06last few years has been so successful that Historic England have now removed Lejade
01:12from their buildings at risk register. So it's been a long old project so we've been doing this
01:17for me and Tom have been doing this for four years but the project's been going on probably
01:22nine years. I think the scaffold got put up nine years ago and it's been an amazing journey seeing
01:28this building come back to life. Obviously being born and bred in Sheffield places like this hold
01:35a lot of heritage and a lot of feelings for people but what we wanted to make sure was that we
01:42used the space in a way that was going to make it relevant for the next 50 years rather than
01:46kind of looking back too much. And mine and Tom's part of this story is basically over so when we
01:52open it's all about the people who have got units here and be that Pete McKee or Le Biblioteka,
01:58Hop Hideout, Mester's Market, all of them. They've worked incredibly hard over the last few months to
02:04get ready for this point. And I thought that's quite a poignant way of looking at it in terms
02:10of your involvement in this and heavy involvement is effectively over. What's that like then because
02:15now you know 10 o'clock tomorrow you're handing over to the guys officially that are working here,
02:20what's that like for you? It's a relief. That's our job right, our job was to be custodians of this
02:30amazing building and get it ready for everyone else and now it's about those people and it's
02:36about the public, it's about Sheffield, it's about this building that's steeped in Sheffield history
02:41and heritage being accessible now again after years and years of being derelict.
Comments