Sunday, Aug. 22, 2004

From Coal to Culture

By J.F.O. McALLISTER

A glorious pedestrian bridge with the graceful line of a human eyelid lifts miraculously into the sky, allowing a ship to pass on the river beneath. On the waterfront an old flour mill has been converted into a striking arts center and a sinuous new concert hall is taking shape; there's a stylish new hotel just beyond. Where in the world are we? Certainly not in a rusted-out, coal-fired industrial city in the northeast of England, right?

Wrong. Newcastle and its neighbor across the River Tyne, Gateshead, might have fit that description for much of the last century, but they don't anymore. Not with the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, which opened in 2001, BALTIC art center and the Sage Gateshead concert hall all standing proudly on the banks of the river. "I'm full of admiration," says Roger Wilson, an engineer from the south of England who's here on vacation.

Vacationers in Newcastle? Scout's honor. If 2003 figures are anything to go by, at least 2 million tourists will this year visit Newcastle/Gateshead, which has recently been chosen as a top destination by Condé Nast Traveller magazine and readers of the Guardian and Observer newspapers. It's a far cry from the late 1980s, when the area was a case study in urban decline — grimy, depressed towns separated by a slow-moving sewer, whose populations were fleeing south as their jobs in coal and traditional metal-bashing industries disappeared. But "it's grim up North" has given way to a remarkably rapid renaissance. Forty-six percent of graduates from universities in the Newcastle region now choose to stay in the area — one of the highest percentages in England — and a survey of employers by OMIS Research ranks it the third-best place to do business in Britain, up from 19th in the previous poll.

The experts call it culture-led regeneration: fixing up the waterfront on the Newcastle side, combined with skillful restoration of the elegant Georgian buildings in nearby Grainger Town, has revived retail trade and turned the city into a destination for stag and hen parties. Then the arts began to grab public attention. In 1994, the Gateshead council commissioned an enormous $1.2 million sculpture, The Angel of the North, by Antony Gormley, to stand near the main approach to the city; it became an overnight sensation. Next up, the $74 million conversion of the old BALTIC flour mill into a major center for contemporary art. It opened in 2002 and welcomed more than 1 million visitors its first year — four times what had been predicted. That same year, the pedestrian bridge ($35 million) won Britain's top architectural award, the RIBA Stirling Prize. The concert hall ($127 million), scheduled to open in the winter, will house an orchestra as well as folk music and dance performances. All this high culture may seem wildly disproportionate, since Newcastle has 270,500 residents, Gateshead less than 200,000. But Neil Rami, CEO of Newcastle/Gateshead Initiative, a group that markets both sides of the river, claims the investments in art, culture, heritage and sport have attracted an extra $2 billion in economic activity, translating to 24,000 jobs. Says Rami: "We're saying about culture, 'It's the economy, stupid.'"

Ramy Zack doesn't need convincing. The plastics manufacturer converted a dilapidated biscuit factory into an art supermarket, big enough to offer a wide variety of work without what he calls "that intimidating atmosphere and snobbishness." Now the Biscuit Factory is Europe's largest commercial art gallery, selling items that range from $30 to $30,000, from glass trays that resemble bubble wrap to sculpted wooden benches. In 18 months, Zack has passed $1.5 million back to the local artists who make 70% of the art shown; one who used to hawk his paintings on a bridge now makes more than $50,000 in a year. In Newcastle/Gateshead, success is proving contagious.