This document discusses rebuilding places through sustainable investment that improves communities. It suggests establishing local frameworks that support various players like developers, housing associations, and cooperatives, especially on challenging sites. It asks what new approaches could work for land supply, funding, infrastructure delivery, and reducing development risk, and whether special purpose vehicles could unlock potential if they received more skills training and support. The overall goal is to embed wide and fair participation to improve quality of life, investment value, and prospects for small businesses and community well-being.
5. How can we establish a local approach embedding fair and wide participation,
so improving quality, product offer, investment value, prospects for
SMEs and community well being?
Establishing delivery frameworks that support players at all scales:
developers, volume housebuilders, housing associations, co-operatives,
custom builders, and community land trusts, especially on challenging sites
What new approaches to land supply, funding, infrastructure delivery and
development risk can work? Special Purpose Vehicles can unlock potential, but
many are faltering due to lack of skills, experience and support
Sustainable Investment
Throughout the UK the public sector estate is being rationalised. Land and buildings are being bundled and released. Special Purpose Vehicles are springing up to receive and process these assets to generate returns for investors.But does a focus on managing the big bundle, mean we are missing the glitter of the small jewel?
Clearly we need to take great care in who we hand our public assets over to. And here I wonder if we always ask the right questions.
In our bundled estate, the risk is we focus on the big and miss the small.We may all sign up to complex legal mechanisms for working towards our the desired outcomes, normally Finanacila efficiencies, service improvements and investment returns.And we may all think about the big places we want to regenerate through our SPV.But does our shiny SPV really have the resource, the skills, the experience, the support – does it have strength in depth to deal with the little places
Does the SPV know HOW to work in the little places?Who from the team that you interview will work with the hyper-local community, the place-experts? The CEO, the Finance Director, the Operations dirctor, the Asset Management, the Fund Manager, the Bank Manager?Who will be able to make that small place successful again?We say this is important because all successful, places add value; and a collection of successful small places will add more value, but they are probably more vulnerable in the transition from public to private ownership, at more risk perhaps of being buffeted by the rise of the big place next door: the ASDA, versus the corner shop.
15 ha former industrial land forming the final large regen site around Cardiff Bay. Igloo is responsible for the regeneration of the site edged red.Cadiff is the capital of Wales, located in the South of the country; Both Wales and Scotland are now devolved administrations within the UK, and this photo shows the location of the Welsh assembly building – the seat of poerwof the Welsh government. This area has been subject to extensive redevlopment, being formerly the locatin of the Cardiff Docks.SHOW AREA OF REDEVELOPMENT
This is the situation 50 years ago, before the barage
1968, the city’s “splendid & magnificent docks” used as a dump.
Igloo won the contract to redevelop the site in partnership with the WAG who is the landowner for the whole site/The contract was advertised through the European Journal in 2006At this point our Fund was only 4 years old and so this was a major success for us; it was noted that a key point in igloo’s selection was its alignment with the Welsh Government’s objectives.We had formed a design team which included SjoerdSoeterAND JeppeAargaraad Anderson, who of couse designed the waterfront at
Click to play vid
Then everything crashed into THE RECESSION.No development makes a return: confidence shattered; the igloo Fund manager looses all his hair.
But there is rescue from an unlikely source CHANGE:
The BBC had a requirement for new studio space for its gwoing number of drama productions successes, based in Wales, led by these guys, the Daleks from Dr Who.
Observer article
It is bold, engaging, rich, entertaining and complex. It commands its tough site and helps you forget that this zone is still largely wasteland. It achieves something beyond the abilities of many current architects, which is to make a very big facade. Of all the BBC's recent adventures in architectural patronage it is, by accident, one of the most successful.
We will achieve the best outcomes when we rebuild Places with PurposeWith a focus on the smallest of places and building up from there. And that is a challenge = the challenge of starting smallYou can see this approach in practice Here in Newcastle, just 4 mins bike ride East of this room, in the Ouseburn Valley. In the lower end of part of the Ouseburn, at its confluence with the Tyne, we are working with the Council and HCA to redevelop sites both sides of the river.This is happening through a simple framework agreement
Does the SPV know HOW to work in the little places?Who from the team that you interview will work with the hyper-local community, the place-experts? The CEO, the Finance Director, the Operations dirctor, the Asset Management, the Fund Manager, the Bank Manager?Who will be able to make that small place successful again?We say this is important because all successful, places add value; and a collection of successful small places will add more value, but they are probably more vulnerable in the transition from public to private ownership, at more risk perhaps of being buffeted by the rise of the big place next door: the ASDA, versus the corner shop.