World-famous restaurant chain The Ivy is looking to revive plans to open a new venue in Newcastle. The luxury London restaurant chain, which is famed for attracting screen and stage stars, originally planned to launch in the North East five years ago.
It submitted three separate planning applications that would have seen it take over the Byron burger chain building on Grey Street. But a month later the world went into lockdown at the start of the Covid pandemic and The Ivy’s plans for a three-floor restaurant in the property never came to pass, with fashion firm End ultimately moving into the building after Byron closed.
Now, however, the Ivy restaurant chain has told us: “Newcastle is an area we are looking at/considering”. The company has yet to confirm where it could settle, but a number of prime sites are either available now or soon to become free.
Potential sites include the former JG Windows unit in Central Arcade, which was put on the market two months after the music business collapsed into liquidation. Property agents recently revealed that both restaurant and retail brands were eyeing the site to become potential new tenants, saying options to split the large unit, spread over several floors, was being explored.
Meanwhile, last week it emerged that Lloyds Bank will be moving into Monument Mall from its current home at 102 Grey Street later this year – a historic building deemed to be a trophy asset in Newcastle city centre. The move will free up the sizeable Grade II star listed building, which has a double height banking hall on the ground floor, with offices set on upper levels arranged around a grand central atrium, a feature which could prove to be perfect for a restaurant by The Ivy team.
At the moment the closest restaurants in The Ivy Collection are in York, Harrogate and Leeds but the company operates 45 cafes and brasseries around the UK – a 50% increase on the number it had before the pandemic. The Ivy restaurants serve breakfast, brunch and all-day a la carte menus, Sunday roasts and afternoon tea, late night cocktails and menus for children, vegans and vegetarians.
Its most recent opening was in Liverpool just before Christmas, where it transformed the city’s former Bank of England building.
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