Long time coming: It has been nine years since plans were announced to redevelop Tithebarn. How is the wait affecting the city?
Preston, Saturday morning: Fishergate, the main retail pitch, is bustling with shoppers. There are queues at the tills in Marks & Spencer, and the coffee shops are doing a good business serving café lattes and a slice of something calorie-laden.
But the happy scene belies a market that some believe is going sour. And the reason? Regeneration. Or rather, the pace of it.
It has been nine years since plans to regenerate the Tithebarn area of Preston city centre were first presented, and there is growing frustration at the effect, or lack of it, that it is having on the city.
The plans are bold: a £700m scheme including 1.04m sq ft of retail, anchored by a 230,000 sq ft John Lewis. Grosvenor, the preferred developer, was joined by Lend Lease last autumn in a 50-50 joint venture to develop the scheme.
Big projects take time. And while you would struggle to find someone involved in property in Preston who would say Tithebarn is not welcome, equally you will find few who would say it is not having a negative effect on the city’s retail and office market.
Danny Pinkus of local agent Robert Pinkus says one issue is how Tithebarn will affect existing retail. “There is nervousness from retailers because they are not sure where the prime pitch is going to be,” he says. “This is affecting values when lease renewals come up.”
Local landlord and developer Arif Patel, whose family has multi-million-pound property holdings in the city, including a site within the Tithebarn masterplan area, agrees. He says: “We own a number of leases that are up in 2010-11, but nothing is happening because of Tithebarn. Retailers are thinking: ‘Why have a shop halfway down Fishergate?’ But is Tithebarn going to happen, and how long will it take? Ten, 15 years maybe?”
There is also concern that schemes outside the Tithebarn regeneration area are not being given as much attention as they would have if the development were not going ahead.
The frustration is understandable, but equally, so is the council’s desire to progress its pet project.
However, it denies that it is favouring Tithebarn above other schemes. “If a scheme is outside the Tithebarn regeneration area, then we will treat its planning application as normal,” says Mike Brogan, vision board manager and assistant director of city projects at Preston council.
He adds that some applications have been submitted for sites within the regeneration zone, but that the council will “resist any piecemeal development” – a policy that, he believes, has been interpreted as the council “stopping development”.
This will not be encouraging news to Patel, who unveiled plans in January for a £100m mixed-use tower on a site his firm owns within Tithebarn which could be subject to a compulsory purchase order.
Patel says: “We want Tithebarn to happen, and if we had to sacrifice our site for the good of Preston then we would do it.”
A project on the scale of Tithebarn will inevitably attract interest from developers looking to benefit from increases in property and rental values. Charles Goodall of CB Richard Ellis, which is advising Preston council and Grosvenor, believes this can exacerbate the problem of market stagnation.
“You do get developers who buy up sites without any intention of developing them, just to capitalise on the uplift in value,” he says.
It is something that equally frustrates the council. Brogan points out that the council’s planning department has a list of approved schemes that have not yet started.
“Developers know that if Tithebarn goes ahead, then a site will be worth a lot more than if it doesn’t. They want to get their planning application in and hold it to see if they can maximise returns,” he says.
So will Preston get any answers this year? Brogan says the council is looking for a planning application to be made in the summer and will see that as a sign of commitment.
“The biggest encouragement we can give to any other investor is for us to work away on Tithebarn,” he says.
Grosvenor and Lend Lease are planning to hold a public exhibition early next month ahead of submitting a planning application. Brogan says Grosvenor is setting up an office in the city, which is also a positive sign.
If the application does appear this summer, it will no doubt boost the market, but there is still a long way to go. There could be a public enquiry, which would add at least a year to the process, and site assembly could be time-consuming if the developers have to resort to CPOs.
Both Brogan and the developers have 2010 pencilled in for a start on site, but it will be another four years after that before the shoppers of Preston have more shops to bustle around.
Churchgate delay: developer awaits council, council awaits county
Another area on the regeneration agenda, which is also making slow progress, is Churchgate aroundthe neglected Church Street in the city centre.
Last year, Cheshire-based developer Bluemantle, together with Ask, was chosen as preferred developer for a mixed-use scheme comprising residential, leisure and office space. Since then, however, there has been no further news.
Mark Caldwell, chief executive of Bluemantle, admits that the torrid economic conditions could be playing a part in the delays, but land assembly has also been difficult.
Part of the site backs onto Tithebarn and, initially, Bluemantle proposed tying the development into Grosvenor’s and Lend Lease’s plans. However, Mike Brogan, vision board manager and assistant director of city projects at Preston council, says that issues with services yards means that this is not possible.
Caldwell says the developers are now waiting for some indication from the council as to how it wants the scheme to proceed.
In turn, Preston council is waiting for a steer from Lancashire county council. Brogan says: “At present, the project is in abeyance. The county council owns the TSB building on the site, and we own an adjacent site. If the council comes up with a comprehensive development for both, then we would look at it. We are waiting for the county to clarify its stance, and then we’ll come up with a new development brief.”
CBD could provide first offices in 10 years
As well as Tithebarn, the city council has ambitions to create a central business district on land between the station and the city’s university.
Preston has seen little, if any, office development in the city centre for at least 10 years.
When Tithebarn gets under way, some of the old office stock will be demolished, and the council is keen to see it replaced.
But as with Tithebarn, there is frustration at the pace of progress. The CBD site is yet to be assembled, and there is no masterplan for the area. At the same time, there are few out-of-town development opportunities and little encouragement for more.
Nick Cos of local agent Bailey Deakin Hamilton says: “The council is very correctly advancing with the notion that there should be a central business district, but there are opportunities that other developers have spotted, and these need to be encouraged also.”
Mike Brogan, vision board manager and assistant director of city projects at Preston council, says a masterplan is nearly complete. “The CBD doesn’t preclude offices being developed elsewhere,” he says. “It’s right next to the university, and therefore we see it as and area for hi-tech, knowledge-based businesses. We still see room elsewhere for businesses that don’t need that location, however.”
Site assembly for the CBD has been delayed because a chunk of land the council was hoping to buy was snapped up by an unnamed private developer, which is submitting its own plans for a mixed-use development, thought to include 50,000 sq ft of offices.
Brogan admits that the planning application could change the council’s plans. “We are waiting for a planning application to come in, and will then make a decision as to whether to look at comprehensive development of the area or not.”
In the meantime, the only office development likely to go ahead is Bluemantle and Kilmartin’s Miller Arcade which will have 25,000 sq ft of refurbished office space above retail. Mark Caldwell, chief executive of Bluemantle, says he hopes to have the scheme finished by this time next year.
