A NEW high technology business park is to be created from the ashes of the Agilent factory on Whitehouse Road in Ipswich.And in a move which is certain to raise eyebrows in neighbouring Bramford, it will be called the Landmark Business Park.

A NEW high technology business park is to be created from the ashes of the Agilent factory on Whitehouse Road in Ipswich.

And in a move which is certain to raise eyebrows in neighbouring Bramford, it will be called the Landmark Business Park.

There was fury when Agilent built its new clean building which towers over the village – residents claimed it was too intrusive, much more of a landmark than they had expected!

The 16-acre site is to be marketed by property consultants Bidwells and contains 250,000 square feet of offices, laboratory, restaurant, and warehouse space.

The first new occupants of the site should be able to move in by the summer.

Meanwhile Bidwells is also marketing two major sites in Ipswich town centre – the county council's St Helen's Court headquarters and the Ipswich Buses depot and household waste site on either side of Sir Alf Ramsey Way.

No price has been put on the County Hall site, but officials and councillors are hoping to raise several millions of pounds to help offset the move to Endeavour House in the spring.

Although St Helen Court itself is listed and cannot have major structural alterations, other buildings on the site including the education headquarters in St Andrews House are 60s buildings which will almost certainly be demolished to make way for new developments.

At this stage the sale does not include county hall buildings in Rope Walk.

The sites in Sir Alf Ramsey way total six acres and will become vacant later this year when the bus company and the household waste site both move to new premises on Hadleigh Road.

The façade of the bus company offices – which dates from Edwardian times – may well be kept when the area is redeveloped for residential use.

"This is the first stage in redeveloping that area of the Ipswich Village project – the building is very attractive and I imagine that façade may well be kept to keep the character," said Charles Ashby-Hoare of Bidwells.

"So far as County Hall is concerned, this is the very start of the project – we should have more of an idea about what might happen there and how much money it will raise by the middle of the year," he added.

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