By Haydn Thomas of Hutchings & Thomas Chartered Surveyors

The restaurant quarter in Newport’s Friars Walk appears to be going from strength to strength.

It’s certainly a case of booking if you want to get in at weekends and other popular times as I found to my cost recently! The restaurant stable is due to be bolstered even further in the next few weeks with the eagerly anticipated opening of Zizzi.

I wonder how long it will be before Queensberry bows to pressure and considers a similar restaurant operator to take vacant space on the top tier level of Friars Walk?

Elsewhere in the city High Street appears to be getting even more popular with the imminent opening of by Blackpool-based Amber Taverns of one of its Hogarth Gin Palaces in the large space which was briefly Linekers Bar.

The property, sold by Richard Hayward Properties, also had a basement and three upper floors.

The large gin palace offering total groundfloor space of 3,344 sq ft fronts on to High Street and Cambrian Road and will add a further dimension of interest to that rejuvenated part of the city already offering a new kind of beat through the likes of recently opened Slipping Jimmy’s and Tiny Rebel Brewery’s Urban Tap House.

Close by but being renovated for a different end is Kings Court in the former Kings Hotel.

One floor, 4,000 sq ft has been successfully let to JVA Consulting. The environmental consulting business has come in from Langstone to take the space in the heart of the city centre.

The development has been a bit of a slow burner. A number of potential occupiers have looked at the space. Now, with all the other developments going on in the city, it seems just a matter of time before more announcements will be made at Kings Court.

It’s good to see that activity has started at some pace on the last section of the river bank at Rodney Parade adjacent to the former art college which itself is now luxury apartments.

Taylor Wimpey, which has set up shop in half of the former marketing suite next to Newport Bridge, is building out the site it has aptly named Renaissance Point.

St Paul’s Church, on Commercial Street, close to Mariner’s Green, is set for a renaissance of its own after the congregation moved out to the former Post Office on the other side of the city in Bridge Street.

There are some exciting plans for the re use of the grand old church which will be great to see and is a fine example of the so called out-wash or ripple effect of rejuvenation in one part of the city spreading out to another and delivering success in its wake

Up the ‘Port and here’s to a brilliant Six Nations for Wales in 2016.