Work will start soon to build a long-awaited conference centre on the Gateshead quayside. But has the project been realised at exactly the wrong time, asks business and agenda editor Graeme Whitfield?
Just over 40 years ago, two men met in the Rose and Crown pub on Newcastle’s City Road and formed the company that would go on to become world-leading technology business Sage.
The company’s name came from a poster on the wall of the pub showing a number of herbs. So it is only by chance that the new arena and conference centre about to take shape just across the Tyne from that now-demolished pub is not called The Parsley, or perhaps even more unlikely, The Basil.
