The ambitious plans to transform Swansea's beachfront Civic Centre site

Plans to transform Swansea's beachfront Civic Centre and six other sites in the city have been unveiled. Regeneration specialist Urban Splash envisages restaurants, cafes and bars on the ground floor of the Civic Centre and flats and potentially a hotel above. A two-storey aquarium featuring marine life on the ground floor and digital and educational displays above is also proposed.

Urban Splash would also like to make more of the green space between the building and promenade. Ideas include outdoor markets, theatre and screenings. It doesn't end there. The Civic Centre site straddles 23 acres and new blocks of flats feature in the drawings. New leisure and cultural uses, making the most of the waterfront location, also form part of the thinking.

The Civic Centre was built in the 1980s and is home to Swansea Council employees, the central library and West Glamorgan Archive Service. The council is relocating staff and the library and archives will move to the former BHS store on Oxford Street.

Urban Splash - appointed as strategic partner by the council in 2021 - set out sketches for the seven sites under the banner of City on the Beach at an event on December 4 and said it would like to hear from the business sector and public. Jonathan Falkingham, the company's co-founder, said there had been suggestions initially that the Civic Centre could be knocked down, but that's not the case now. "The building is really well made," he said. "We think it's robust, and it's very adaptable. The upper floors are very flexible. We genuinely think we've got some really exciting uses for the building." He added that asbestos and concrete surveys had been carried out. "We are fairly comfortable," he said.

Urban Splash development director David Warburton said the Civic Centre site with its 550m of waterfront had space for potentially 500 to 600 new homes. The Civic Centre isn't everyone's cup of tea architecture-wise, which Mr Warburton alluded to when addressing an audience at The Green Room Bar and Kitchen by Swansea Arena. "Our job is to make you fall back in love with the Civic Centre," he said. It's too early to say when work would start