The Plan
Cardiff Council and the Welsh Government have lofty ambitions for the centre of Cardiff. The creation of a “national business district” was heralded by Cardiff Council's Lib Dem leader Rodney Berman as a “red letter day for the city”. It's a fantastic and exciting vision of Cardiff's future, perhaps more so than my own the other day.
The site is slap bang in the middle of Cardiff city centre, adjacent to Cardiff Central station on what is now called “Central Square”. It also includes the site south of the station – Callaghan Square – which is already home to some of Cardiff's most significant employers such as Eversheds, British Gas and ING Direct.
The plan, as envisaged, includes:
- A £10m, 19-bay bus station, with 90,000sqft of offices above and 14,000sqft of retail at ground level.
- Compete reconfiguring of traffic flow in and around Wood Street and Westgate Street.
- A “corridor” between Cardiff Central and the Millennium Stadium.
- Up to 4million sqft of grade-A office development.
- Landscaped public space, including a prominent water feature called the “Taff Wall”.
- A £50m convention centre somewhere to the north of Cardiff Central station (~1,500 capacity).
- A new road layout, and 500,000sqft of office development to the south of, Callaghan Square.
- An embryonic bus rapid transit system linking Cathays Park, the city centre and Callaghan Square to Cardiff Bay via the CBD (could be expanded in future).
Presumably, there'll be several spin-off developments and there are plans - both longstanding and recent - for new hotels in the area.
The Execution
Last March, the then Economy & Transport Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones (Plaid, Ynys Mon), announced £21million of funding towards the Callaghan Square side of the development. In addition, current Business Minister Edwina Hart (Lab, Gower) announced that the site is to be an enterprise zone targeting the financial & professional services sector.
The first phase of the development – the new bus station some 100m from the entrance to Cardiff Central on what is now Marland House and a car park – is due to be completed some time in 2014. Two major office developments totalling 230,000sqft – earmarked for legal firm Hugh James and insurers Legal and General – are also part of this first phase.
It's been estimated that a total of £160million could be invested in the scheme over the course of the development.
Cardiff Central is due to get a new platform and redeveloped entrance to the south of the station in the next couple of years.
It also underlines the importance of electrifying the south Wales mainline to Swansea, not only for links to London but to encourage commuting into Cardiff city centre from towns and cities like Bridgend and Newport by public transport. We still don't have a proper timetable for that as yet.
The Problems
We still don't know, exactly, what features Welsh enterprise zones will have – I'm confident Edwina Hart will sort this one out soon, and the enterprise zones across Wales - including a few new ones announced in the last few weeks - are due to be up and running some time this year. When the UK government announced its own enterprise zones last August, at least there were a bullet point list of features : business rate discounts of up to 100%, sharing of business rate income to boost economic development of local authorities, simplified planning processes and fast broadband.
I assume something similar is going to happen in Welsh enterprise zonesm with the additional targeting of sectors, but it would be nice to get some sort of idea of the specifics - and the sooner the better.
Cardiff Central Business District is disjointed, piecemeal and scattered – The railway acts as a huge physical - and psychologically impenetrable - barrier between the north and south of Central Square. Development isn't exclusive to the Central Square area either. JR Smart are currently developing a mixed-use scheme called Capital Quarter – which falls just outside the proposed enterprise zone AFAIK. So what are all these developers, including local ones like JR Smart, supposed to think when Cardiff Council and the Welsh Government decide to go it alone and put schemes they're developing at a competitive disadvantage?
You also have the ongoing failure of the Capital Waterside office development, next to the Senedd and Millennium Centre, to reach the next stage of development. An application has been submitted for an extension of planning permission there by another five years.
Admiral's new HQ is also, effectively, going to be outside the enterprise zone. Could that development stall now? Unlikely, as work is imminent, but a close call.
Porth Teigr – a creative industries cluster at Roath Dock - is coming along rather well but it all forebodes an oversupply of development land in Cardiff Bay.
Lastly there's “Havannah Quay” - a huge redevelopment on the east bank of the Taff that's stalled.
Possible CBD tenants are reported to be jittery – It's been reported in the South Wales Echo that Legal and General, one of the main tenants earmarked for the Central Square development, are close to pulling out. I think these reports should be taken with a pinch of salt for the time being but it's not exactly auspicious.
Cardiff is still some way from being a "global" or "European" city of note – Putting my pessimist hat on for the moment, this whole development could be a case of tail wagging the dog. As I've noted, this could - and I believe it will be - an absolutely magnificent development that can propel Cardiff up the various league tables.
It could also be hard to let real estate, last-minute public sector occupiers or vacant, undeliverable sites and schemes. There's long-standing problems with the airport, Cardiff's universities are slipping down global and UK rankings, and while the public transport situation in Cardiff is decent (if not spectacular), there are issues there too. Arriva's rolling stock is like something out of Albania for example.
Have I done a Welsh Tory-style Cold War comparison there?
I fear that building new offices which are destined to remain empty is going to be the new cardiff bubble, repeat of the flat building craze in the bay over the last decade. There are already a number of empty premises closeby, for example on Newport Road and by 'Magic Roundabout'
ReplyDeleteThe new bus station needs to be carefully planned too, stations where buses reverse out of the stand create bottlenecks and more accidents, really they are not an ideal design. We have had a number of disastrous design errors with bus stations over the years throughout Britain, it would be a shame if we try to shoe horn one into too small a space in the search of more land for office accommodation.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments as always.
ReplyDeleteWelsh Agenda - There are a number of new flat developments in Cardiff at the moment, in particular those aimed at students. Baffles me to be honest but development is development. It's their money I suppose, whether it's a waste or a potential reward to reap.
Cibwr - Absolutely. Though Bridgend and Swansea bus stations have the reverse in-out thing and as far as I know there haven't been any accidents yet. It's where bus meets pedestrian or cyclists they need to be careful, especially in that part of Cardiff.