The Midlands is at the heart of the UK’s property sector and various organisations, including Coventry & Warwickshire LEP, Northampton borough council, Invest in Derby, Invest in Nottingham, Leicester city council and Invest Ashfield & Mansfield, are showcasing the area at MIPIM UK.
In the West Midlands, Coventry and Warwickshire LEP will be aiming to show why the latest UKTI figures for 2013-14 have deemed its area as the most successful for inward investment in the UK outside of London, with 44 successes.
Les Ratcliffe, chair of the Coventry and Warwickshire Champions – a partnership of private sector businesses which helps promote the area – said: “Our advanced manufacturing and engineering sector is proving highly successful. There have been a string of investments, which together make Coventry and Warwickshire the hub of automotive and manufacturing in the UK. We want that message to reach investors.”
Major city-centre mixed-use development is taking place at the 3.2m sq ft Friargate scheme next to Coventry railway station, where the city council has kick-started the £1.5bn project with a 100,000 sq ft office headquarters prelet. This led chartered surveying body RICS to also take a prelet at the scheme, of 36,000 sq ft. Demolition work has just started and developer Friargate Coventry is on the hunt for further tenants.
With the East Midlands being the UK’s fastest-growing regional economy and Bank of England governor Mark Carney describing the region as a bellwether for the UK, Northampton borough council is planning to use MIPIM UK to attract attention to Kier’s Four Waterside development and its four-acre Greyfriars project.
Kier was chosen last December to develop the 250,000 sq ft Waterside development, which comprises four office blocks. The site, between the River Nene and St Peter’s Way, sits within the Northampton Waterside enterprise zone and is the flagship development, linking together several other projects, including the new £12m railway station, University of Northampton Innovation Centre and a 430,570 sq ft retail development planned for the former Greyfriars bus station.
The latter hit the headlines in July after the council and Legal & General ended their five-year development agreement after rival out-of-town scheme Rushden Lakes was approved by a planning inquiry. The council is now progressing the Greyfriars development on its own.
Meanwhile, in north Nottinghamshire, the Ashfield and Mansfield conurbation is emerging as a solid and steady investment proposition. It has pulled itself up the rankings in the city league tables year-on-year and has emerged second out of 64 UK cities for expansion of knowledge-intensive business services (R&D, professional consultancy services and tech companies).
The conurbation is ninth in the UK for overall SME expansion and 14th in the country for expansion of manufacturing companies, with Sutton-in-Ashfield town centre in the top 10 performing towns in the country for reducing vacancy rates.
Sutton has seen a 7.6% fall in the number of empty shops in the town centre in the last four years, with 11.2% of shop units vacant in 2013.
In Mansfield town centre, comparison spend has increased by £29m to £313.4m and footfall is up by 7%. Shop vacancies have been limited to between 10% and 14% and, in a major vote of confidence, LaSalle Investment Management acquired the Four Seasons shopping centre in April for £53m. The firm is set to make an investment of around £3.5m to revamp and refresh the centre with a view to keeping it as a long-term hold.
With Leicester city council and the city mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, banging the drum and unveiling a new 3D flythrough model of the city, which highlights current regeneration projects, the Midlands will be centre stage during the show.
