AMID all the ballyhoo this week accompanying the launch of the Stockton-Middlesbrough Initiative, the concept of a "Tees City" was lurking in the background.

There was much talk of the creation of a "city-region" with Stockton and Middlesbrough as the "urban-core" but the ultimate aim is clearly a Tees City. No mention of Teesside of course.

Proposals for the new city were among the few ideas which were actually costed in the plethora of pamphlets and Powerpoint presentations fed to the assembled Great and the Good of the Tees Valley (including key people from Darlington, Hartlepool and Redcar and Cleveland).

The Tees City idea will be launched by a two-day "Tees City Symposium" (£200,000). There will be a Tees City "branding strategy" to "create a new, positive and dynamic image" (£100,000). There will be a Tees City Director (£80-100,000) "to provide leadership and direction to the development and delivery of the Tees City strategy from the outset".

It's grand stuff but what about the identities of Middlesbrough and Stockton and the Tees Valley? Where do they fit in with all this re-branding going on. Teesside's identity crisis just will not go away.

Hole in the heart

While on the subject of the changing face of our towns (and cities) work is due to start next week on a key site in the middle of Darlington, just opposite the offices of this newspaper.

Ever since Spectator came to work in the town more than 20 years ago, the area now called the Cornmill car park has been a big hole in the town's heart. Soon that hole will be replaced by a shopping and car park development.

At one time the site was the home of Pease's mill, a grand Victorian structure that among other things produced yarn for soldiers' battledresses during the Second World War. It had a tall chimney which for many years was as much a landmark as the nearby spire of St Cuthbert's Church. The mill closed in 1972 and the building and chimney was demolished in 1984.

Spectator trusts that some acknowledgement of the site's history will be made when the new structure is opened, sometime before the end of this year.