City is still open for business (From This is Hampshire)

City is still open for business

7:30am Sunday 23rd November 2008

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By Matt Smith »

IT was the city’s highest-profile casualty of the credit crunch, bringing much heralded plans for a new arts complex crashing to the ground. After years of delay council chiefs were again left hunting another developer to transform the former Tyrrell and Green building into the hub of a thriving cultural quarter in Northern Above Bar.

Other developments have this year gone the same way. Flat-building in Ocean Village has been abandoned, a new £50m hotel there has stalled, and cash wrangles and market uncertainty have put the brakes on an £80m scheme to create 650 jobs at Mayflower Plaza.

They punctured a hole in a £1.7 billion vision for the future of the city.

But city chiefs have seized the chance to relaunch the vision at a conference of developers, investors, city planners, architects, and business leaders, with signs the arts complex will return.

Cabinet member for economic development Councillor Royston Smith brushed off the economic downturn, slammed the media for peddling “doom and gloom”, insisted the vision would be made a reality and pledged the council would put up no obstacles.

To a packed room of 140 delegates he declared Southampton was “open for business”.

Cllr Smith heralded the city’s coming “renaissance” as driven by three key developments – the cultural quarter, the regeneration of the city’s waterfront at Royal Pier and the huge leisure complex earmarked for the derelict wasteland at West Quay Three.

A Scottish developer is now busy working on plans for a world-class pier district, while WestQuay shopping centre owners Hammerson say they will shortly submit their plans for Watermark WestQuay bringing 1,000 jobs.

And city chiefs revealed at least ten developers have come forward as they prepare to re-market the site of the old Tyrrell and Green building in the new year.

The news comes as work starts to rip down the nearby former C&A building in Above Bar to make way for a new regional business centre which will house around 800 workers as part of a revamped Guildhall Square.

The last proposals for the city’s long awaited arts complex – housed in two landmark glass apartment towers – collapsed this summer when luxury flat builder City Lofts went into administration.

Councillors have now set aside £1.2m to bulldoze the Tyrrell and Green building and open up the plot to parkland while another developer is sought.

Colin Wilkins of Savills, the appointed agents, confirmed at least ten developers from the UK and overseas had expressed an interest in transforming the site, which was worth around £7m last year.

He said the new scheme would be “a better design and quality” than the four-year-old proposal from City Lofts and could also feature a three or four star-hotel alongside residential units.

“It will be an iconic building in what ever form it takes,” he promised.

However it is now unlikely to be completed before 2014 – some eight years behind schedule.

Meanwhile, the business centre will be ready sooner. Mr Wilkins sees it as a “catalyst” for the redevelopment and regeneration of the wider Northern Above Bar area.

Outsourcing giant Capita, which last year won a ten-year £290m contract to run key city council services, plan to move into the six-storey office building by 2010.

A new council customer service centre will be created on the ground floor alongside shops and restaurants spilling out onto Guildhall Sqaure.

The council is also in talks with Southampton Solent University over the dated Sir James Matthews lecture building off Guildhall Square which would be left out of keeping with the new developments.

University marketing director Trevor Thorne said demolition was not on the agenda and that no decision would be made until the arts complex plans became clear.

“We would plan to fit in sympathetically with what goes on around us,” he said.

A unelected group of council, business and a community leader turned down a bid for cash to create a colourful mural on the university building, choosing instead to splash £120,000 on a controversial 3-D model of the city, dubbed City Vision Centre, which is tucked under the stairs of the city art gallery.

The man behind the model, architect Paul Grover, said it was attracting 150,000 visitors a year, and unveiled to delegates the latest part of the jigsaw –a freshly cut model of the West Quay cinema, hotel and flat proposals.

Business leaders were keen to praise the council event and its vision. Christine Salomon-Olsen from the Southampton and Fareham Chamber of Commerce said the high turnout – double that expected – “showed the level of optimism and ambition in Southampton today”.

While Business Southampton chief executive claimed other cities would “give their right arm” to have Southampton’s development opportunities. She said businesses should be proud of the city and its bright future.

“These are hard times, but they will get better. We will get through this.”

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