So it’s farewell to 2022, which will go down in history as a year of upheaval and change - we had three Prime Ministers, four Chancellors and the end of the longest reign with the death of the Queen.
And in Bristol, 2022 will be remembered as the year life got back to something approaching normal following the Covid pandemic, and the people in the city voted to end the ten-year-long experiment of having one person in charge of the city, with the referendum to scrap the position of city mayor.
But what will 2023 bring for Bristol? What can we look forward to, be that with excitement or apprehension? We’ve polished up the crystal ball and had a look at what people should expect to see in Bristol in 2023 - and the things they won’t.
Read next: Bristol Light Festival 2023 announces plans for 10-day event for the New Year
1 The reopening of the Bristol Beacon
Formerly known as the Colston Hall, the Bristol Beacon has been surrounded by builders’ fencing and scaffolding for years since the hall closed back in June 2018. Since then, the name has changed, and the hall has been operating out of its modern foyer while the refurbishment turned into a full-blown restoration - something that has been repeatedly delayed and controversially cost the city’s taxpayers an extra £60 million or so. There is no date yet formally announced for the reopening of what will be the Bristol Beacon’s smart new modern and vast concert hall, but its website is still confidently predicting this will be in ‘autumn 2023’.
Read more: City council spent more money on Bristol Beacon than on transport last year
Read more: Bristol Beacon project 'still worth doing' despite costs doubling, says mayor Marvin Rees
2 A new use for M&S
Broadmead and the city centre’s main shopping quarter has been slowly withering, even before the Covid pandemic, with the closure of iconic stores like Debenhams and Marks & Spencer in the past few years, and the announcement that The Galleries will eventually be demolished and turned nto a mixed-used development.
But there are the seeds of the new future for Bristol city centre. In April, ‘Sparks Bristol’ will take over the M&S store and turn it into something very Bristol - a creative and environmental hub which will encourage the community to get stuck in. Read more about that here.
3 The continuing rise of Maya Jama
She’s probably the most famous Bristolian out there right now, and 2023 will be the year she becomes even more of a household name. It won’t be long either. The new series of Love Island is due to banish the darkness of the boring bit of winter (January and February) with sunshine, tans, chats by the firepit and muggy people giving each other the ick in mid-January.
Whether you're a fan, or you've never watched a second and can't stand it, it doesn't matter. The fact is Love Island is now one of the major televisual and cultural events of the year, and this year Our Maya is to be its new presenter.
4 The map will be redrawn
The year 2023 marks the 650th anniversary of the creation of Bristol as an official city and county - there are, or maybe were, plans for big civic events to celebrate this, but they appear to have been scaled back somewhat.
Anyway, 2023 will be the year Bristol’s distinct boundary will be challenged a bit, with the redrawing of the parliamentary constituencies. This is expected to happen in the summer of 2023, and will mean the creation of a new Bristol North East constituency and, eventually, MP.
This new constituency will, for the first time in years, straddle the border between Bristol and South Gloucestershire - meaning one MP will serve an area that takes in Lockleaze and Eastville, as well as the bits that resolutely aren’t Bristol, like Kingswood and Staple Hill. Who will that MP be? Well, the current Mayor of Bristol is the first to declare he might be up for that - an announcement which got a mixed reception in Kingswood, before Christmas.
Read more: We visited Kingswood where next General Election will bring a new political battle
5 New secondary schools for Bristol
The baby boom experienced in Bristol in the mid-late 2000s and early 2010s is working its way through the school system now. Work to open up two new secondary schools, both run by Christian multi-academy trust group Oasis, has been hit by years of delays but, according to their website and a Mayor’s blog back on the last day of August, both will open their doors in September 2023.
There is a catch, though. The Oasis Academy Daventry Road school will start life in temporary accommodation on the existing site of Oasis Academy John Williams in Hengrove, with at least another year before it opens actually in Knowle West.
And there’s an even longer wait for the new pupils of Oasis Temple Quarter. Delays with planning permission mean that while the new school on Silverthorne Lane in The Dings will finally happen, it won’t be ready until at least September 2025. The first pupils of Oasis Temple Quarter will move into a temporary school on an old council warehouse and yard site in Spring Street in Bedminster instead.
6 The Chocolate Path reopens
The pedestrian and cycle way along the north bank of the New Cut River Avon on Spike Island began to crumble way back in July 2017 and was eventually closed due to safety fears as it started slipping into the high tides in December 2017. But it wasn’t fixed for a couple of years and, sure enough, the road followed in January 2020, meaning the entire project to fix it cost millions more than it would have done if… ah never mind...
The important thing for those who prefer to look to a brighter future for Bristol, is that the work to repair the embankment there is nearing completion, and it could well be reopened in early 2023, although there is no definite date yet.
Don’t get too excited, you drivers who use Cumberland Road as a route into the city centre. The council is planning to put a bus gate further down, effectively create an eastbound cul-de-sac. That will probably happen when, or soon after, the road fully reopens, so it will still be be Coronation Road for you…
7 Gaol Ferry Bridge reopens
Speaking of the New Cut, the main pedestrian and cycle way bridge over it from Southville to the city centre and Wapping Wharf has been shut for months now, and was originally supposed to be opened at Christmas. That morphed into 2023, and right now the council are still saying it will be six to nine months although there is no clear or definite reopening date for those badly-hit businesses at Wapping Wharf, if it doesn’t reopen in 2023, something has gone seriously wrong with the project.
8 BoxHall
Further round the Floating Harbour, and the Redcliffe Bascule Bridge should be fully reopening very soon - it sort of is already - but next to it on Welsh Back something else is due to open in 2023. The owners of Box Park, the foodie venues in London, are creating something similar but a bit different in the old O&M Sheds next to the bridge. Work has already started, and it was all supposed to be open already, but now they are pencilling in a summer 2023 opening for this.
BoxHall is the biggest, but not the only new restaurant or eating experience for Bristol’s foodies planned for 2023 - there’s a full list we’ve put together here.
9 A renewed football rivalry?
It's been 22 years since Bristol City and Bristol Rovers were in the same division of the football league system. They've come close to being reunited a few times since, but only had three meetings in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy since. So while 2023 will be the tenth anniversary of the last time the two teams played each other, football fans in the city are going into the New Year thinking that, just maybe, 2023 will be the year when it's back on.
Now in the third tier, Rovers are on the up, trying to battle their way to back-to-back promotions after last May's last-gasp drama, while Championship side City are struggling. Just three wins in the last 18 games of 2022 now sees crowds at Ashton Gate looking nervously towards a relegation battle in the first few months of 2023. So, either City could be relegated to League One to meet Rovers, or Rovers could be promoted join City, and earn second-tier status for the first time in 30 years.
Ironically, of course both of those things could happen, and 2023 could be the year when City and Rovers pass each other in the promotion and relegation standings, and still don't end up playing each other.
And the six things that won’t
For the past few years, certainly since the pandemic, it’s felt that, actually, 2023 was going to be the year before things happened. Many big projects in Bristol and beyond that have been announced or where work has started on, have the year 2024 ringing around them.
So 2023 could well feel like the year nothing much changed, before it all did.
The YTL Arena
It’s been years in the controversial planning, and YTL now say the arena they are constructing or creating at the Brabazon Hangar building on the south side of Filton Airfield will open in 2024.
Ashton Gate Sporting Quarter
The plan for a smaller conference centre/arena/indoor basketball stadium, with hotels, offices, flats and a big car park is a couple of years behind, because of the pandemic and planning delays, but it’s got planning now, and while 2023 should see work starting, it won’t start coming together until 2024.
Temple Quarter
While the Oasis Temple Quarter school is opening, albeit half a mile away in Bedminster, 2023 looks set to be another year where things are put in place for the start of the huge transformation of the area around Temple Meads Station, with loads of student tower blocks, a new university campus and, just maybe, it’ll be 2024 when people start seeing things on the ground there.
Bedminster Green
Work is already well underway on the first of the five huge sites that form the Bedminster Green regeneration project, which will see more than 2,000 new homes - half of them for students - on the Malago Road. But even the first off the ground - the student accommodation blocks on Dalby Avenue - aren’t scheduled to open until September 2024, and 2023 will be another year where that road, the main A38, continues to be closed for northbound traffic.
The new Bristol Zoo
So 2022 saw the end of a century and a half of history in Clifton, with the closure of the Bristol Zoo Gardens, and that - as well as the plans for what happens next there - is something that’s still very controversial.
But 2023 will be a full year of there being no Bristol Zoo as the move to the Wild Place continues, and arguments about that and the future of the site, Meanwhile, yes, 2024 is the year that Bristol Zoo say its new future begins out on the other side of the M5 near Cribbs Causeway.
Read more about Bristol Zoo's future:
- Bristol Zoo's gardens would be new public park after move
- Campaign launched to 'save Bristol Zoo'
- New Bristol Zoo will turn part of South Gloucestershire into an 'African forest'
A new political future for Bristol
In May 2024, Bristol goes back to the polls, and it will be two years since the referendum which called a halt to the position of Mayor of Bristol. So 2023 will continue to be a full year with a Mayor who knows his time is limited, before it’s all change with city council elections and a new committee-system starts in 2024.
Up next:
The Times crowns beautiful St Pauls hotel as best place to stay in South West
Popular Bristol Christmas street fayre returns for first time since 2019
Just Eat Awards announces Staple Hill restaurant among best takeaways in the south west
Tare announces date new Wapping Wharf wine and food bar will open
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