In the next couple of months, construction is due to start on what Bournemouth council hopes will be the first in a series of town centre redevelopment schemes with a total end value of up to £500m. The housing-led projects at Leyton Mount and Madeira Road West are the pilots for Bournemouth Development Company, a 50:50 joint venture between the council and Morgan Sindall.
The UK construction and development group was one of three shortlisted firms in the frame to partner the council in a two-decade-long town centre regeneration programme set out in its Town Centre Master Vision. Early in 2011, it pipped French construction giant Bouygues and London-based Cathedral Group to the post.
Now, 18 months on and Bournemouth is one of still only a handful of local authorities (the others are Croydon, Tunbridge Wells, Torbay and Slough) that have set up a local asset backed vehicle in an attempt to unlock the development potential of their town centres.
The concept behind BDC, a limited liability partnership, is simple enough: the local authority provides sites, Morgan Sindall develops them, and both parties share any profits equally. Bournemouth council suggests that its half of the takings will be reinvested in future development projects.
So far so good, but what about in practice? Roger Ball, Bournemouth council director of technical services and BDC board member, admits that, particularly in the current climate, “there’s no such thing as an easily deliverable scheme.” Although the former building surveyor has not managed a similar project before, he says that involvement in top level talks has helped to prepare him for the challenges ahead.
Some of those will be considerable, as many of the 17 sites across Bournemouth, mainly surface car parks and totalling 26 acres, which are earmarked for BDC’s attention (see map), have been the subject of previously unsuccessful redevelopments.
Ownership will transfer to the LABV only when it formally agrees to take a scheme forward, and the first two sites – at Leyton Mount and Madeira Road West – are about to make the move. They are not the largest projects in BDC’s portfolio, but have been deliberately chosen to provide, as soon as possible, tangible evidence that BDC can deliver finished buildings.
That evidence is likely to be necessary to whittle down some formidable local scepticism about whether BDC will be able to achieve anything at all. “[BDC] is trying to progress matters at a time of complete inertia in the development world. I just can’t see a lot of these things happening. What can the present regime do that others couldn’t do in better times?” asks David Cowling, partner at Bournemouth agency Cowling & West.
Simon Greenwood, development land agent at Savills’ Bournemouth office, agrees, and remains unconvinced that the LABV structure chosen for Bournemouth is the right one.
He says: “The council has tied itself to one developer for an awful lot of properties. If it had put those sites into two or three baskets it may have been able to drive them through more quickly, especially as geographically they are quite disparate, compared with the compact layout of those in Croydon’s LABV.”
The criticisms do not faze Duncan Johnston, general manager at Morgan Sindall Investments and BDC board member. He counters that BDC has made swift progress in getting through planning consent for two schemes in a year-and-a-half. He says: “I think that’s unbelievably good – the normal gestation period is three-to-five years. It takes a long time to get planning and funding –- you have to be patient to get there.”
BDC is also unapologetic about a strong bias towards residential development, with hardly any commercial office or retail space planned. It points out that the Town Centre Master Vision is committed to providing more urban living space.
In any case, Johnston points out: “Demand for offices here has swung towards small starter-type units rather than large blocks.” However, sceptics still question the viability of residential schemes while the council has a policy requiring 40% of units to be built as affordable housing.
Beyond the two schemes on the starting blocks it is not known which will come forward next – a BDC strategy meeting as EG went to press should have clarified this – although both the Winter Gardens and Cotlands Road are believed to be high on the list. Others, such as the controversial Waterfront site, home of the former IMAX building that is due to be dismantled from next week, are likely to be some way off.
The council’s Ball says that the local authority has realistic expectations about what BDC can achieve: “Things are going to stay tough for a while – we’re treating this as the new reality. And we’re not being overly optimistic about future values, as we don’t see values rising for some time.”
Bournemouth council’s technical director, Roger Ball, says that BDC’s list of sites is largely indicative and there is no pre-defined order of development. “The list is just to give an idea of scale,” he says. Other sites may be added or removed – but only with the council’s and Morgan Sindall’s consent. “We have a 50:50 board structure, so BDC can’t do anything unless both parties agree,” he says.
