Creating opportunities: Councils are preparing the ground for future regeneration projects in towns such as Grantham. Andy Coyne reports
It is appropriate that Grantham, the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher and home to Sir Isaac Newton’s school, should be engaged in radical thinking. But it will take the bullishness of the former and the ingenuity of the latter to make the Lincolnshire town’s ambitious regeneration plans succeed in the current climate.
So it is probably fortunate that much of 2009 will be taken up with pump priming – gathering together packages of land and progressing with key infrastructure projects – in the hope that the lesser-spotted active developer will be more abundant in a year’s time.
Regeneration, of both the physical and economic varieties, is much needed in the town. Its largest employer, Fenland Foods, which supplied Marks & Spencer, was closed down by its parent Northern Foods in August, with the loss of 730 jobs.
South Kesteven district council and Lincolnshire county council hope to give new life to the town through wide-ranging plans, which include creating 400,000 sq ft of offices, almost 9,000 homes and extensive retail and leisure offerings across six development zones around the town (see map). There are also plans to build a viaduct over the East Coast Main Line to alleviatetown-centre traffic congestion.
The residential element has helped Grantham to win growth point status from the government, which has committed £5.2m of investment towards the town’s regeneration. But Simon Wright, Grantham’s growth point manager at Lincolnshire county council, stresses that housebuilding alone would not have been such an attractive option.
“We don’t just want to build houses and not think about where people work and spend leisure time,” he says. “We have aspirations for the town. It should perform better in a regional context. It has a great rail link to London and it could do better.”
This public-sector enthusiasm is not entirely reflected in the private sector, where eyebrows have been raised in the industry at the scale of the regeneration plans.
Wright stresses that the proposals are exactly that – proposals – and that more work will be needed to turn the visions into reality. Station Point and Canal Basin are being assessed by consultants GVA Grimley and Ekos, respectively. He says: “Once those studies are completed, we will then have the evidence to allow the Growth Point Strategy Board to make decisions about what is deliverable.”
If the market conditions have any upside it is that people will not be making rash decisions. Wright confirms that 2009 will be taken up with preparatory work. “Not a lot of the land is in our ownership so negotiations are under way with landowners,” he says. “We are doing the ground work now so that when things do pick up we are ready to go.”
Northampton offices
And the best performing office market in the UK is Northampton.
A surprise result, perhaps, but according to Lambert Smith Hampton’s Performance Indicator Index – which looks at factors such as employment and property costs – Northampton is top of the tree, offering good-quality space at competitive prices and equally competitive labour costs.
However, Ian Leather, head of LSH’s Northampton office, admits that the statistics do not tell the whole story.
“There isn’t a huge oversupply and costs are competitive, but it doesn’t churn the level of space that you see elsewhere,” he says.
Northampton has seen a steady centre-outwards drift by occupiers ever since Barclaycard decamped to Northampton Business Park more than a decade ago. Leather reveals that 75% of office transactions now take place out of town.
But he is hopeful that the decision by cosmetics firm Avon to move into a new, purpose-built, 100,000 sq ft headquarters in Nunn Mills Road on the edge of the town centre could kick-start a reversal of the trend.
“The Avon building is a great catalyst for a shifting office dynamic in Northampton,” he says. “There is an opportunity to build offices on the back of that, to attract larger-scale occupiers from out-of-town locations.
“There are opportunities around the town centre at the Station Gateway site, the power station at Nunn Mills and on the rest of the Avon site.”
He admits, however, that he is talking about the longer term.
“2009 will be steady as she goes. One or two of our clients are sitting on permissions but I can’t see them putting the infrastructure in and incurring expenditure,” he says.
Town-centre sites
1 Greyfriars
2 Wharf Place
3 Station Point
• 130,000 sq ft retail
• 40,000 sq ft offices, hotel
• 440 homes
• 63,000 sq ft leisure (across the three sites)
4 Canal Basin
• 40,000 sq ft food and drink
• 15,000 sq ft leisure
• 820 homes
• 360,000 sq ft offices
Town outskirt sites (not shown)
South Quadrant
• 4,000 homes, schools, some retail
North West Quadrant
• 3,500 homes and infrastructure
Northampton retail
Plans for an out-of-town retail park in Northampton have been blocked for at least 17 years.
Northampton borough council has told Northampton Town Football Club that its plans to expand its Sixfields site through developing a retail park would not be given the go-ahead before 2026 as it seeks to protect the future of the Grosvenor Centre shopping area in the centre of the town.
The Grosvenor Centre also has plans for a revamp but the council is aware of its vulnerability. Woolworths has already closed in Northampton, while Zavvi, which has premises in the Grosvenor Centre, is in administration and seeking a buyer.
The council has told the football club and its investment partners it will now only consider non-retail expansion plans. David Cardoza, Northampton Town chairman, says: “We are bitterly disappointed.”
