Boots Island site can cash in on ‘ripple effect’
OFFICE DEVELOPMENT WILL BE ATTRACTIVE TO COMPANIES LOOKING TO MOVE OUT OF MORE EXPENSIVE CITIES
THE latest multi-million pound plans to transform the Boots Island site on the south side of the city centre is “more deliverable” than previous schemes, says the company behind the scheme.
The team behind the plans for more than 900 homes, 650 student flats, a five-star hotel and retail units have said they have taken great care in ensuring their project can get off the ground.
Christopher Ware, head of investment at Conygar, the firm which owns the site, said they have money in the bank to start work and have taken care to ensure the plans can be rolled out in stages.
He added: “We don’t have any debt. We have cash so we can start doing things as soon as, but more importantly, the scheme we’ve designed we feel is deliverable.
“We’ve done a lot of research, spoken to a lot of occupiers and investors and tried to work out how we can design a scheme that can be developed, which I think everyone from the city to ourselves, is what we really want to see.
“Its been designed so it can be rolled out in a phased operation from west to east, which makes it far more likely that it can be delivered.
“We focused very much before we got into detailed plans on a thorough and new site investigation.
“A lot of our time and effort and cost on understanding the technical issues which are often the impediments to development.”
Mr Ware said Nottingham is one of the cities on the radar for big companies looking to open new offices, who see London, Manchester and Birmingham as getting too expensive.
“Nottingham has really suffered from a lack of office development,” he said. “The city probably lost several hundred thousand square feet of occupier in the last three or four years.
“If the office space had been there some of that would have been retained and if you retain the tenants it’s a bit of a circle, in that suddenly the city becomes far more attractive to investors.
“There’s an element of chicken and egg about that. London is very expensive and Manchester has gone the same way. Birmingham is heading in that direction as well, and that matters to people.
“Costs matter, but at the same time they don’t just want to go to anywhere. They want to go to a city where staff like to live and has good transport links as well. Nottingham always scores very highly for quality of life, which matters more and more to big companies these days. Having that work-life balance and affordability in terms of houses that Nottingham can offer is attractive to