Presentation by Mr Tom Bloxham, MBE
Urban Splash, brownfield regenerators. In some
ways I do not like the distinction between brownfield and greenfield.
Most of the stuff we have done is previously disused sites in
the North West, Manchester and Liverpool, two of the most deprived
communities. I think a lot of the work we have done has shown
it works. I am not from a property background myself, I got involved
in the property business because I was a student selling posters
in a very small poster shop and I wanted to get a bigger shop.
I had to take a lease on a couple of floors in a run-down street
in Manchester that was too big for me and then I started subletting
surplus space to other entrepreneurs and retailers for the space
that they wanted. I ended up making more money from doing property
development and property subletting than I did from selling posters.
I went to Liverpool and bought my first freehold which was in
a street called Slater Street, just off Bold Street and did my
first property development. I started to learn all sorts of things.
This was a very, very desolate and redundant street and properties
here were being sold for £10,000 or so but with the new uses
for the buildings and the use of design you actually could attract
people in through specialist shopping, through bars and through
managed work space. We did a similar sort of thing in a small
building in Manchester, Ducie House, which was an old derelict
warehouse due for demolition. The owners actually applied for
planning permission to demolish—they did not realise they
did not need planning permission to demolish it—and MDC
were very brave and refused their permission and it went to auction.
We bought it for a relatively small amount of money and converted
it into a series of managed workspace, mostly for the media and
music industries. There are sixty or so companies working there
now and what is interesting is that more people work in these
premises than ever worked there when it was a petticoat factory.
Urban Splash really came about in 1993. (Indicating) This
is a scheme called Concert Square. If you look at the black and
white photograph what is interesting is how desolate it is, no
cars, no people there. We worked this with some gap funding in
the old city grant days, a relatively small amount, £600,000
on a £3 million project. It was basically converted into
a series of loft apartments on the upper floors and bars and restaurants
on the lower floors. The building in front of it is a two-storey
building and here working with the local authority and Liverpool
City Council and with some ERDF funding we managed to create a
new town square. We opened up a new town square and the blank
elevation you see there was converted into a series of loft apartments,
bars and restaurants and it is now a real hub in the city centre.
On the back of this project, with a relatively small amount of
money, every building around has been successfully redeveloped.
This is one typical good example where gap funding can come in
as a one time catalyst to show the property industry that value
can be created in areas of no value and can actually generate
genuine refurbishment. Another similar story, the School House
in Trafford Park Estate. The consensus in the property industry
was that this should simply be demolished. Rather than demolish
it we worked with the Trafford Park Development Corporation, we
received no funding at all for the actual building but we received
a fair bit of funding for the landscaping. People always concentrate
on the building and do not concentrate on what is around it. We
wanted to change the perception, it was an industrial estate and
we had to attract office users in there. We did this by changing
the perceptions, not so much on the building but actually on the
landscaping. Rather than put a sea of car parks in front of it
we gave away 50 or 60 car parking spaces, against the advice of
all the surveyors, and made it into a pocket park, where you can
sit and have lunch, where you can sit out if it is sunny. Most
important of all, if that is your office, when you invite clients
to your office the landscaping says something about your company.
(Indicating) This is a small loft scheme in Manchester,
the first loft apartments in Manchester—a very small building
on the right but again quite carefully designed. The other thing
about it is it is relatively cheap, these were about £50,000
to buy and although it is not in everyone's price range it is
in most people's price range. Particularly in London these loft
apartments are seen as yuppie flats of half a million pounds plus.
A good design should not be preserved for the rich and there is
no reason for it to be preserved for the rich. It is about making
exciting places to live in city centres, to encourage people back
into them. If cities are attractive places in terms of the accommodation
available and the streetscape then people will want to live in
them. (Indicating) This is Smithfield buildings, another
scheme that attracted some gap funding from English Partnerships
at the time. It is in Oldham Street in Manchester, a run-down
street, it is about a £12 million scheme with about £2.5
million worth of gap funding. Like many streets it had been a
great street, this was a department store called Affleck &
Brown, who were supposedly the Harrods of the North. It went through
a very sad period of decline, the streets were full of sex shops,
a lot of derelictions, some of the roughest pubs in Manchester.
This building was 3 per cent occupied and we bought it for three
or four pounds a square foot freehold. We went about converting
it and we worked very closely with the local authority and we
spent a lot of money on marketing. In a way we are more of a marketing
company than a property company. Conventionally the health board
was telling us about location, location, location and their whole
emphasis is to buy land. In terms of land buying they are extremely
visual, they are buying land today for 50 or 60 years' time. Once
they have bought the land they build any old house on it and it
always sells. If you look at the difference between a £500,000
new build house and a £50,000 new build house it is usually
very small. There are all prestige Dorchesters, Chichesters, Winchesters,
Georgian and Victorian houses and it is location, location, location.
We believe the opposite, we actually believe you want to spend
money on the design and the environment and actually people do
not mind buying in a poor location. A lot of people want to buy
in a poor location, the secret is you have to persuade them that
the location is on the way up. If you persuade the purchaser that
the location is on the way up then they are very, very canny and
they get the benefit of the capital increases. People in all of
our developments see increases in the value of their land of 20
per cent or so in the first 12 months. We work very closely with
the parties, respond to community associations and spend a lot
of money on marketing, not just selling the hard block but selling
the idea of this is living. Conversions are a very skilful, difficult
job because you see loads and loads of unseens, you have lots
and lots of problems with extras. (Indicating) They told
us this roof was in good condition. A bit of public art here into
a bridge link. Again, these things are very hard to justify, it
is very hard to say what the value is but it gives something that
says it is important to put a vibe into the area. What is particularly
depressing for me is when we go for gap funding these are the
first things that are knocked out by the assessors, who are working
for the RDA, as needless extras that do not need to go in and
that do not really need to happen. These are typical sorts of
environments. When we were first doing this everyone was saying
what are we doing forcing these people to live in the city centre,
it is dirty and noisy and grimy why do they want to live there.
When we said we were doing Oldham Street they said, "Is it
going to be social housing?" Rather than doing some very
cheap housing there was a whole range of properties in the same
building from £40,000 to £300,000. We made sure we had
the most expensive flat in Manchester in this area to turn people's
perception around. The other thing is interesting tenants on lower
floors. Architecture is very important and most normal people
are not architects and spend as much time looking in shop windows
as they do in actual shops. When we go abroad we find interesting
little streets with interesting little independent retailers,
such as selling surf wear in Manchester, furniture, art galleries,
all sorts of weird and wonderful shops. Our main project at the
moment is called Britannia Basin, this is a £50 million scheme.
Again, there are three basic schemes and what I want to emphasise
again to you is for the first scheme we received gap funding,
which was Britannia Mills, which is the one nearest to you. The
next two schemes are being done with no gap funding at all and
have been very successful. Not only that, hundreds of other private
sector developers are looking around, buying up properties without
any funding to actually redevelop it. The funding that was provided
really acted as a catalyst to show the private sector what could
happen. The property industry is extremely reactionary, extremely
sheep-like if they are not making money. If you can show them
there is money to be made in urban regeneration they will all
be getting into it, they are all getting into it. (Indicating)
This is an area of Manchester very close to the city centre, it
is cut off by canals, railways and major roads, totally isolated,
basically no one had lived there for 100 years, and in very, very
poor conditions. Most of the buildings are empty, the ones that
are occupied are occupied for 50 pence a square foot, sweatshops,
very low paid property. As I would say, with a bit of imagination
and £13 million you could turn this into something quite
interesting. That is a large part of what we are about. We are
in the risk business here. One of the reasons I think the private
sector have to do it is you have to take risks, you have to have
deep pockets and persuade yourself and persuade others that this
thing will work, despite all of the evidence around you. One of
the issues is that the public sector by and large is not an organisation
to take risks, people are very afraid to take risks. It did not
used to be the case but it is now and therefore I feel you have
to use the private sector, encourage the private sector to take
risks. The appraisal process gets more and more advanced and better
and better designed to cut out risks and in the end you end up
supporting your own projects that you risk in the first place,
it is a funny catch-22. Here we are converting this into private
apartments and all of the time we are keeping what is best about
the old buildings, keep those, and add on to it really good, new,
contemporary architecture. House builders say they build what
they build—these Winchesters, Dorchesters and Chichesters—because
that is what the public wants. The reason the public wants it
is because they have never been given a choice, as soon as you
give them a choice of other good quality city centre stuff they
are screaming for it. People were queuing in the rain for nights
before and we sold it for a year and a half before they were actually
completed. We have a two year waiting list for our apartments.
Every single apartment we have done has been sold before it has
been completed. That is a testament to the quality and design
and the way in which we do things. (Indicating) Another
building adjacent to Britannia Mill, this one is a pure shell
scheme where people only buy four walls. This is taking derelict
buildings with no use and turning them into something useful.
This is a site in between the two of them where there is big competition
to do a new build of the same quality as our Victorian, Edwardian
and Georgian buildings. Not all people want a little house in
a cul-de-sac, some people want that and there is no problem with
conventional house typing, it is a choice and for many people
it is very appropriate. Many, many other people do want them,
they want high ceilings, they want big windows with a quality
of space and that is why they buy second hand Victorian and Edwardian
houses with real quality space. What we are trying to do here
is do a new build building with the same quality of space. We
had a big artist competition where 500 people entered into it—it
was judged next door in the House of Lords with Lord Rogers, local
councillors and journalists—and ended up picking a young
designer from Birmingham called Glen Howell to produce this very,
very exciting high-rise prefab concrete building. Again, the demand
has been phenomenal and turning typical brownfield sites into
a place of life and vibrancy. It is a very good example of working
in partnership with the City Council joint venture. It is a great
scheme, a grade two style listed building in Shaw Street in Everton,
Liverpool, a building that had great potential but it was a building
which when we drove past it we were told not to look at it. The
reason we were told not to look at it was it had a build cost
of £20 million and the value was £4 million. It actually
took us four years to equate those two values. The other thing
we need to do is to be given a chance to actually develop proposals.
One thing we will always be up against is the public sector's
need for compulsory tendering. These are the sort of schemes we
are doing in Liverpool and Manchester. Awards: we are very proud
of the number of awards we have. They are different types of awards.
We have won awards for architecture. It has always been a thing
of the past, if you were a great architect and you went for architectural
awards but you always you went over budget and you never made
any money and they were very, very expensive buildings. We have
won seven awards for architecture, more than many architectural
practices. We have also won Property Entrepreneur of the Year
Award. There is a thinking that if you are a property developer
you are some type of character who would have to screw every last
penny out of a deal. We have won civic trust awards, what house
awards and there is school of thought that to do that you have
to be some sort of charity, social housing provider which would
run way over budget and make crap buildings. All three, I firmly
believe, not only can go together, should go together and have
to go together. (Indicating) This is our sale suite, it
is basically a portacabin. It is designed to show our customers
two things that are very, very important to us and very, very
important for regeneration. One thing is innovative design, if
we are to change our cities we must come up with a good design,
we must come up with a better design to make them better looking
places, better feeling places, better places to live and work
in. The second is marketing, it is all very well that you are
doing things, however, once you have done them you must market
the cities, you must tell people how good they are, and that has
been the result of some of Manchester's success over the last
ten years. We must get the marketing right. (Indicating)
The last slide, concentrate on the right and look at the quote,
the quote is, "We will leave this city not less but greater
and better and more beautiful than it was left to us." That
must be the essence of what the Urban Task Force is all about.
We must try to concentrate on deliverability and real things that
are going to happen rather than just the process and the mechanism.
|
