Recently in Regeneration Category

If you missed the Manchester leg of the Estates Gazette Question Time tour, you missed Savills' Patrick Joynson calling the end of the recession, writes Simon Binns.

We're all in this together for another five years, according to Joynson, one of the panellists at the Lowry Theatre on Salford Quays. Banks are lending, he said, but sadly, they're lending to firms who don't actually need the money.

I'm pretty sure Tom Bloxham, chairman of Urban Splash, winced at the other end of the panel on hearing Joynson's prognosis. Or maybe that was down to the fact that the famously ardent Manchester Utd fan was sat next to Manchester City's head of infrastructure, Pete Bradshaw, who handled the question on banks' lending policies with the deftest of touches. "We don't really have to borrow, to be honest."

The Co-operative's Ruariadh Jackson, overseeing the firm's new Angel Square HQ and the sale and leaseback of the 21 acre site it sits on, was happy that it's banking arm had been cautious lenders. He was also happy about the new building's BREEAM Outstanding status, as the debate moved on to green developments and retrofitting.

BBC chief operating officer Alice Webb, who's MediaCityUK offices you could see from the window of the debating room, went one better. They've developed a carbon calculator and even given it a name - Albert.

I also spotted Bloxham emailing/texting on his mobile during the debate. Maybe as a fan of social media, he was tweeting about the event, and in this day and age, it seems and appropriate way of summarising.

So, the EG Manchester QT in 140 characters? 'Greater Manchester needs more skills, more money, and to forget about London.'

Simon Binns is Estates Gazette's North of England correspondent

Reports today that Aussie shopping giant Westfield has finally taken the 23-acre shopping centre-sized hole in Bradford to the checkout have come as no surprise to retail experts and Yorkshire property folk alike writes Mark Simmons.

After all, we've been here before: a sale was mooted in the spring and Westfield has long been coy about its ultimate plans for the centre. But when Westfield started shelf-clearing its interests in other UK regional centres earlier this year, most notably in Nottingham, it was only a really matter of time before Bradford dropped into the basket.

The 500,000 sq ft retail scheme, originally known as Broadway, has been a victim of circumstance and rotten timing. Owned by a succession of developers over the last 15 years, it has never progressed beyond a cleared site.

Yet there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the proposed centre: although the retailtropolis of Leeds may be a shopping trolley's push down the road, Bradford has its own large catchment positively crying out for modern mall space. The fact that Wakefield, another Leeds satellite, managed to complete a similar-sized centre last year (and in the middle of a recession, natch,) demonstrates the strength of retailer and consumer demand.

So the sale of the Bradford site can only be good news for both stores and shoppers. The scheme is as oven-ready as they come and could easily be ready by early 2015. One piece of advice from the retail bods: just take with a pinch of salt suggestions that Westfield will manage the completed development.

Picture by Tim Green aka atoach on Flickr

Liverpool Football Club announced plans to increase the capacity of its Anfield stadium this week, from 45,000 to 60,000, writes Simon Binns.

Essentially, the club has joined an already existing partnership between the local council and housing association Your Housing, who are carrying out a £25m redevelopment programme around the stadium.

Anfield is a rare thing in terms of modern top flight stadia - tightly surrounded by residential streets in an era where the trend has been to build new out of town structures while the old site is sold, invariably for new housing. Several of those neighbouring streets will have to go, however, to accommodate Liverpool's own £150m DIY project.

The club claims the local community and home owners are 'supportive' of the proposed expansion. If they look further down the M62 however, they will need to take heed of the problems faced by the club that Liverpool - and the rest of the Premier League - are trying to catch.

The 'money no object' approach of Manchester City, now owned by Abu Dhabi's seemingly bottomless sovereign wealth fund, has brought success on the pitch. It has also brought forward hugely ambitious plans for a £100m training academy and campus around its Etihad Stadium, similar to that of Barcelona's Nou Camp, on an 80-acre site that used to be a gas works.

The community engagement programme carried out by the club was some of the slickest and thorough I've ever seen. Yet the club still had to spend six months negotiating with a truculent local landowner, resulting in a compulsory purchase order and unwanted media attention.

Shaun O'Brien, owner of OB Truck Services, took on the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, dividing up land he owned around the stadium into 5,000 individual sq ft plots to try and disrupt any CPO attempt. He claimed the club refused to 'negotiate reasonably' and priced the plots at £250 each.

Manchester City Council claimed O'Brien was trying to hold the land - and the club - to ransom. The CPO was finally granted in August.

Liverpool has already referenced the 'complex planning landscape' around a redevelopment such as this. Putting a loft conversion in is one thing - making room for an extra 15,000 to regularly come into the area is quite another.

Another factor is success on the pitch. Will Fenway ultimately invest in their franchise if Liverpool continue to drift away from the top four or five clubs?

If Liverpool do take anything from Manchester City though, it should be that while sensitivity will win you friends, ultimately, hardball will take out your enemies. On and off the pitch.

Simon Binns is Estates Gazette's north of England correspondent
Picture by Ben Sutherland on Flickr

Newport has finally started to find its feet. The news last week that Queensberry had signed its leisure anchor for the £100m Friars Walk scheme in Newport seems to say regeneration is at last beginning to take it's first faltering steps.

As revealed by EG in this week's magazine Cineworld will anchor the leisure part of the scheme with an eight-screen cinema. There's a sparkly new picture of the scheme above and below is how almost the same view point looks today. Debenhams has already signed as the retail anchor and with the incredibly acquisitive cinema operator now taking space it hints that the occupiers haven't given up on Newport.

One agent said that it won't be long before Marks and Spencer makes a reappearance in the town. The retail closed down it's city centre store WHEN in favour of an out of town location, but that could all be about to change. Queensberry have said in the past that they are in still in a dialogue with M&S and it would be mad not to.

But what really gives everyone hope is the fact that Queensberry says it is in "advanced talks" with national operators for the ten restaurant units and has agreed terms with its main fashion anchors. An announcement on the latter is expected very soon.

Newport is still too often the butt of too many jokes. But if, as promised, the developer can nail those retailers then the pundits are going to have to find a different punchline.

There have been loads of ideas, suggestions and frankly some hare-brained schemes for what do with London's Waterloo International since the last Eurostar pulled out in 2007. But one released last Friday by The Land Trust and Free Architecture caught our eye. It wants to turn it into a garden.

Grab your wellies, it says the station is a ready-made greenhouse where people could enjoy the outdoors indoors. The space requires no alternations to the existing building fabric and could accommodate allotments, kitchens and dining cars as well as farmers' markets and er, a cinema.

Some might scoff at the thought of sowing spuds on such a prime bit of real estate but they claim their vision is not entirely rooted in fantasy pointing to Madrid's Atocha railway station and the High Line gardens in New York.

Sadly, the powers that be haven't quite got the same vision and it hasn't made the shortlist of the Landscape Institute's Green Infrastructure competition....this time, says Jonathan Harvey, co-founder of Free Architecture.

Related articles

• Queensberry talk lettings and financing in Newport (estatesgazette.com)

It cost the council £15m to walk away from Modus in Newport. The developer had been planning a £200m retail led scheme in the city centre. Judging by the look on Newport city council's corporate director Sheila Davies' face, it was a tough but very good decision. 

At the recent launch of the London Hilton Wembley I caught up with James Saunders, chief operating officer of Quintain to talk about the 20 year regeneration project around the stadium and arena.

Related articles

• Pics: Hilton Hotel Wembley launches just in time for the Olympics (estatesgazette.com)

From the 20th floor of the ugly brown Market Towers building at Vauxhall you get a birds eye view of the Nine Elms and Battersea regeneration site in south west London (click on picture to view it on Flickr with sites notated). 

James Buxton is back. The affable former senior partner at Bidwells today launched plans through property company Pigeon for a £30m scheme in Ipswich (pictured above).