Big-budget sequels are often a disappointment: ropey plot, predictable outcome, paper-thin characters. So hopes for the London Road Fire Station Compulsory Purchase Order No 2 were initially low.
But how wrong can you be? Manchester city council’s second attempt to purchase the historic but crumbling Grade-II* listed fire station, owned by Britannia Centres, looks like being a thriller.
This time the city council means to win. It has set aside £60m for the redevelopment, and another £2.3m to pay legal bills for the CPO.
The first CPO attempt to acquire the 109-year old building ended ignominiously in 2011. An inspector threw out the council’s plan, saying it was not deliverable. It cost the council dearly – about £1.5m in legal fees.
Four years later, with development of the fire station by Britannia still apparently no closer and the site even more significant because it is within yards of the proposed new HS2 high-speed rail terminal, the council is trying again. A second CPO has been launched. The council thinks it has cracked the problem that undermined the first CPO attempt. Back then the inspector concluded that the council’s development plan – which hinged on a letter of intent from developer Argent – wasn’t sufficiently certain. This time the council says it will hold a development competition after it has won the CPO and, if that doesn’t produce a suitable outcome, it will develop the site itself.
It would be an amazing plot-turn for a cash-strapped Labour council to build, from its own resources, a five-star hotel. Supporters of the CPO wonder if the council could really do this while simultaneously cutting services. And this is where the drama really begins, because even the council’s most ardent cheerleaders worry that the storyline is too far-out to be credible.
Emma Curtin is chair of Friends of the Fire Station, and a long-time campaigner for action. She is enthusiastic about the CPO – and thrilled by the prospect of work on the site – but not so sure about the strategy.
She says: “If the CPO is to work the inspector needs to be clear the development really will happen. Last time the city council didn’t have a fully worked-out plan. This time they have to be very clear – and we feel that if they held the development competition in advance of the CPO they can say who they will be working with and what they plan to do.
“It is more certain that way. It would be safer to have a commitment from a development partner, perhaps commitment from new hotel operators.
If the council can demonstrate commercial interest, in addition to providing the financial assurance as they are today, it would undermine the Britannia case.”
Specialists in the arcane world of CPOs say Curtin has a point.
Stan Edwards, chartered surveyor and director of CPO specialist advisor Evocati Consultancy, says: “In 2011 the regeneration purpose of the CPO was easily challenged, because the city council came empty-handed to the inquiry.
“Today they have to demonstrate a reasonable prospect that their project will proceed, but that isn’t the same as demonstrating you have the money to do so.”
“The council say they will run a development competition after the CPO, which means at the time of the CPO inquiry you cannot know the results of the competition and how the project will succeed, and so can’t tell if the council’s commitment to underwrite the development is required, because you haven’t yet run the competition,” he adds.
Council reports suggest the development competition will be based on the existing Britannia planning consent but would allow for it to suggest modifications that “respect the heritage value of the building” – which seems to allow room for uncertainty.
Edwards says: “It would be prudent for the council to run a marketing exercise to discover what scheme is suitable for the site, and they could then demonstrate more fully to an inspector how it can proceed. It is a question of sequencing.”
The council’s decision not to go down this road puzzles some of its many supporters. If running a development competition would make the success of the CPO certain, why not do it?
The council’s chief executive, Sir Howard Bernstein, said the uncertainty of the CPO process would deter serious developer interest. Council reports talk of the uncertain physical state of the building.
Argent, winner of the last development competition in 2011, is not involved with the current plan, although a well-informed source said it stands ready to help in any way it can. “It is an exciting site, but there are lots of exciting sites in Manchester,” says the source.
A Manchester city council spokesman told EG: “We are not prepared to engage in a running commentary about the rationale of what we are and are not doing.”
Meanwhile, Britannia has problems of its own. The Hale-based firm defeated the last CPO by showing the inspector that its scheme was more deliverable than the council’s. But it may find it harder to secure the benefit of the doubt after its March 2012 announcement – only months after defeating the CPO – that its scheme was not viable after all. Britannia preferred not to speak before the CPO inquiry’s big opening night.
The lights dim and the inspector takes his or her seat this autumn (probably). Book your seat now. It’s going to be gripping, and – if it all goes wrong for the council – there might also be a weepy third instalment to follow.
