EDITOR’S COMMENT What’s that saying about once-in-a-lifetime opportunities? Well, it turns out they do come round more than once in a lifetime. Especially if they are major regeneration opportunities based around York’s railway station.
For what will be perhaps the fourth or fifth time over the past two decades, a partner is being sought to bring forward the 111-acre York Central site.
The site has changed over the past 20 years, of course. Initially it was to be as much as 200 acres of land, taking in ABP’s sugar factory site too. Initial proposals also included a huge amount of retail. Today’s consented plans are more than 2,500 homes and 1m sq ft-plus of offices.
Since the early 2000s the site has been mooted as a King’s Cross of the North. Now, it might actually become it.
Although not name-checked in the Levelling Up whitepaper, the site is very clearly a levelling up opportunity. Government has eyed the site to house one or more of its agencies in years gone by, now it will likely have to make a home there if it really is to show its commitment to the levelling up agenda. Homes England boss Peter Denton says the agency is already in talks with some commercial tenants for the office space at the site, I’d wager those talks were with the public, not private sector. Although with decades in the investment sector, Denton will inevitably have some strong contacts there too.
Work has finally begun at York Central. Shovels are in the ground. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities has provided a decent slug of investment to get the infrastructure works going and Homes England has appointed JLL to seek potential investment partners for either the commercial aspects of the scheme or the whole site.
This, after almost 60 years of being locked way, could be the site’s moment to shine.
And it’s the start of what will be a new era for Homes England, Denton tells me in the EG Interview this week. The agency will still be doing its bit to improve affordable housing numbers and the quality of those homes, of course. That is, after all, why Denton left his happy place at Hyde Housing to join the agency. To make a bigger difference, to have a bigger impact. But part of having that bigger impact will be in regenerating our town centres and, says Denton, the commercial real estate sector has a huge role to play in that.
He wants the market to come knocking on Homes England’s door. He wants investors and developers that believe they could take on a project like York Central – or similar in Wolverhampton and Sheffield and the next set of locations Michael Gove announces as the levelling up agenda powers forwards – to come knocking, and he wants owners of assets in need of repurposing to ring that doorbell too.
“There are plenty of tertiary and secondary office and retail assets at the moment, some with continued life, some not, and if, with our powers, our various buckets of capital, we can support other people to reposition assets, to reposition areas, that’s wonderful,” says Denton. “I am really looking forward to the agency supporting people who have probably never thought of the agency before as something that can help them.”
The agency will, under Denton, also start to help itself – for the greater good, of course. The agency has CPO powers and Denton is unafraid to use them. Especially in the name of levelling up.
Just like it may now be York Central’s time to finally get off the ground, maybe the same is true for the commercial real estate sector making a bigger impact on society through its role in regeneration across the UK.
Maybe now, with Homes England’s door wide open to collaboration with our industry, we will see some levelling up of the perception of property’s role in supporting the growth of the UK as a whole.
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