Exciting plans unveiled for Crescent Link site

The massive project on land adjacent to Lisneal College includes a 60-bedroom hotel and a 120-seater restaurant, a cinema and exhibition centre with a high profile from the Crescent Link road, and a new Sainsbury's store which should guarantee 400 new jobs - all integral parts of a strategic mixed-use development by Orana Group subsidiary GML (NI) Limited.

The proposals also include a pioneering new Live Work Home scheme, private health facilities and a state of the art digital centre to house a worldwide name in technology or finance. One of the other interesting possibilities is that discussions are taking place with a French organisation that manufactures and supplies state of the art bicycle components for racing teams. This would bring 20 highly skilled mechanics onto the site. The firm currently has no presence in the British Isles.

Advanced negotiations are also taking place with a US company that has 120 jobs to handle financial warranties.

Speaking for the first time about the dynamic project, George Long, of chartered surveyors and project managers George Long Associates, paid tribute to the work done by William Hay MLA, saying he was so helpful that he was "practically part of the negotiating team" that had put the whole project together over the past four years.

"I can't over-emphasise the input William has made since the start," he said.

He added that four years of effort behind the scenes had brought the project to the stage where work is ready to get underway "instantaneously" once planning permission is given.

While the land is sited at Crescent Link, Mr Long sees the project as much wider than the Waterside, and even Londonderry, but as a regional one that could have a major impact on the North West as a whole.

He also said that, so advanced is the project that 1,000 jobs would be created on "Day One" while as many as 3,000 new posts could be filled by the time it is completed. By the time the development is fully realised, up to 300m will have been spent on land and building work - and not a penny of that will come from the public purse.

With Londonderry becoming UK City of Culture in 2013, the timing would appear perfect for a development that could not only create thousands of new jobs itself - as well as new leisure, tourism, medical, office and other facilities - it could also add further stimulus to the indigenous economy and boost confidence in the North West as a place for inward investors to do business.

Mr Long said retail would only form a quarter of the scheme and that the project was never meant to compete with existing facilities.

He said that when discussions began in 2006 the housing boom was at a height, and the site was never intended for a large scale housing development either.

Showing the Sentinel detailed plans, Mr Long added: "Every single person engaged with our organisation are either property professionals or banking professionals, and they have dealt with hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds in schemes. We felt that the housing sector was over-heated and we looked at what drives jobs. There are 7,000 houses in the planning system, but what creates meaningful demand for private sector housing is people's ability to get and to pay for mortgages.

"So we felt if we could come in here, to sustain housing development, to sustain growth, you need to bring jobs. There are sectors where you can bring in large, single employers such as Seagate and such, but everywhere in the world is competing for that and at lower cost bases. We looked at how to create jobs and the modern problems we were faced with. The issues we were faced with were competition from other regions, we still have to survive, we still have to create jobs, we still have to create growth. Our view was that we go to the potential investors and ask them; 'What would make it work for you? What would encourage you to invest in this region'?

"Part of William's demand was that it had to be something that was different, it had to have missing components."

Mr Long said potential investors were identified as his company had worked with investors and investment teams for many years in locations throughout Europe.

"And we had encouraged them at that time that we should be looking at Northern Ireland and particularly in the North West because it was an area of historical under-investment. But under-investment meant that there were actually opportunities, and opportunities meant that there were missing components, in leisure and in retail and there was a change in emphasis in how business was being done."

He said his company had also been involved in trying to find recant-decant solutions for Workplace 2010 (a 2 billion programme of work to transform the Northern Ireland Civil Service office estate) and that this had revealed a serious lack of available, good quality office spaces in the North West.

"I had been working very closely with one of the bidders. When we looked at the North West we suddenly found there was no quality office space, no quality sites to either locate existing businesses for expansion or accommodate new businesses coming into the region. That was part of the model that we put to these people. We then looked at the people solutions, and saw the number of young people moving away never to return, the high quality of education, and the lack of opportunities in this region because there wasn't a strategic, balanced approach to creating that first step, creating that enthusiasm and confidence.

"So we had the people solutions and could see what the building solutions were."

Mr Long said Project Kelvin provided the technology and communication solution needed to bring high tech and financial businesses to the North West, and there were transport and networking opportunities because of the proximity to the airport, railway, and hospital, while the Crescent Link site was also situated in a gateway city.

"It was such an ideal location. We put such a case for investment that the investor didn't purchase the site subject to planning permission, but purchased it outright at a cost of almost 70m. When you put down a 70m stake, that is a massive vote of confidence in the region."

The vision for Crescent Link is an exciting one, which complements other developments while also offering unique opportunities within the British Isles. Despite the worst that the economic downturn could throw at local, regional, national and international economies, work went ahead on the imaginative proposals, and the North West may be about to see the dividend on that investment.

The plans are further advanced than those of Ilex, who are charged with regenerating the North West and are developing a masterplan that includes development of the Ebrington and Fort George sites.

If all goes to plan, the Crescent Link project could help drive Ilex's own proposals, by showing what can be achieved and in turn giving confidence to other potential inward investors that this is, indeed, an area worth more than paying a cursory visit to. (How often have we questioned the lack of investment brought to the North West by Invest NI despite the number of visits by potential investors, while watching Belfast attract major projects?) Throw in the developments that will surely accompany the city's journey through its City of Culture year, and the future begins to look very bright indeed for a region previously bogged down in a past littered with long dole queues, poverty, deprivation, lack of educational attainment, ill-health and poor social and economic prospects.

Retail has been seen as important in the past, yet Ilex recently admitted that too much retail business was leaking from the city, as consumers looked elsewhere for what they want, including online stores. This was a fact not lost on the Crescent Link developers four years ago, and on Sainsbury's.

Mr Long said that the new Sainsbury's store would complement the Strand Road one, and that fears the Waterside jobs would replace positions lost on the cityside were groundless.

"There was massive leakage out of this town and Sainsbury's saw that. We are not bringing in a new player, we have an organisation that wants to expand. This was not about displacing jobs, and in fact Sainsbury's has also committed to expand their offerings on Strand Road, so so we felt it's a win/ win situation for this town. Sainsbury's is not canabalistic, as they put it to me. They want to expand and there's no site that attracts them as much as this site.

"In this city we see ourselves as the second city, and we see ourselves as one of the major players on this island, and we felt it was highly inappropriate to shoehorn a company that wishes to expand. This is a growing region and it would be wrong to shoehorn businesses into locations that are not appropriate. If you look at other cities, would they try to shoehorn businesses into inappropriate locations? So this is not about being out of the centre and competing with the city centre, it's about bringing extra choice and extra jobs. Not a single thing on this site could be done in the city centre.

"They can see that this city is ripe for development, expansion and modernisation. And here we have a gateway location and a signature building in Crescent Link - people arriving in this town will see a building we are creating to a high quality which will send out a message of enthusiasm and growth and confidence for the future, and this will be around 2013. We will have a state of art Premier Inn hotel, we will have a state of the art cinema and conference facility, high quality retailing to prevent the current leakage, we will have Live Work Home units which are aimed at incubator businesses in this town who are trying to start up businesses and can't get proper parking, can't get proper infrastructure, can't get proper office space, can't get proper tenancy agreements and all these things around it."

Based on a scheme in Malmo, Sweden, the Live Work Home units are particularly pioneering in this part of the world, offering self-contained places for people, and their families, to work and live in, with all necessary facilities on their doorstep. Mr Long said all 26 councils in Northern Ireland had taken trips to Sweden in 2005-2006 to see how this model worked.

"We have mimicked the success that's been happening in Malmo. It encourages people to take a chance. It works for families, it works for young professionals. It's a fantastic idea."

Other incubator units will also be available.

The health facility, while offering a private service, should also have major benefits for NHS patients, according to Mr Long.

Mr Long explained: "This is a state of the art facility for primary health care. We have had discussions with some of the most eminent private primary health care units in Europe. With two of them we are providing financial modelling. One of the issues in a region like this is that it has suffered from an inability to attract and retain high quality consultants and medical practitioners. If I am a top-notch consultant and I come to an area, I look to see what I can have in terms of high quality facilities for private consulting - this was a well-known barrier to bringing the top consultants to this region and we have addressed that.

"And you have to look at their families too and what's available for them. All of this project is about creating confidence and, most importantly, opportunities for young people. This is about giving the investor what they want. Business parks are failing across the board in terms of their ability to attract and retain tenants; we wanted something that is sustainable and creates a community dividend and when this proves successful, success begets success. People will come in and look at this and say, 'We like what you're doing here, now let's look at the rest of the region'."

A major landmark will be the Digital Building Solution, which is future-proofed and aimed at household name providers of IT solutions. Talks are being held with a number of top organisations and once planning permission is secured, the rest should become a formality in a high tech world where organisations need certainty and are primed to act with the utmost speed once they are satisfied that this exists.

"This project is not aspirational, it's solid and, if we had planning approval tomorrow, we could guarantee 1,000 jobs on the site on Day One," said Mr Long. "This is an organisation that has spent 70m acquiring the site, they have spent millions more marketing this region and this town, they are major stakeholders in this town."

The overall impact on the regional economy, from the new facilities which could generate anciliary and other businesses, as well as the spending power of thousands of new salaries, is currently being assessed by Oxford Economics but it would be safe to say the knock-on effects could be substantial.

Even now, there is an effect, as Mr Long said that people who sold sites at Crescent Link are investing in other sites.

"This project has been given the support of the community, it's solid. We will tie in with the council and the community to make sure that the people who benefit from this in the construction phrases, in the development phases and in the implementation phases will be the local community. Work would begin immediately and we would begin recruiting staff immediately. The finance is in place."

Mr Long has already outlined his plans to Derry City Council, and Premier Inn has made a presentation, and the council has been supportive.

He is confident that the entire site will be filled with clients quickly, once planning permission has been achieved. With so much work already done, all that remains to be tied up are the loose ends, and that should happen quickly once the Planning Service makes a positive decision. That approval will allow the developers to provide the certainty that top class companies want in the fast-moving world of technology and finance.

"We held a meeting with one of the people from a substantive IT company and we put the proposals for the North West to him, and said we believe we have something that is fantastic. He pointed to his yacht and said, 'I don't care where we locate, so long as I can maintain my yacht and maybe get a bigger one in a year or two's time. I want certainty, and I want a cost-effective solution'. We offer certainty, deliverability and sustainability; that's what they want and they want us to provide solutions that match their processes. And that's what we have done. This has been a targeted business plan."

A number of companies are already signed up, including Sainsbury's and Premier Inn, and all of the necessary components that will have the other interested investors signing on the dotted line, are in place except for the planning permission. But Mr Hay hopes that will be forthcoming as quickly as possible and that work will begin to make a vision reality, and recruitment can get underway to fill those first 1,000 jobs.

As the Foyle MLA said: "If the goodwill is there this can happen quickly. I would have thought that with the creation of so many jobs the planners will act quickly."

Mr Long added: "This is about giving investors confidence and about giving communities confidence. This will bring in missing components. We do not have signature office space, high quality leisure space that other towns of this size in the British Isles have. If you even look at the expansion and the proposals for Altnagelvin hospital. We will have lots of patients who will be travelling to Altnagelvin. If you look at the infrastructural support that surrounds Altnagelvin, it's limited. If you have a cinema, leisure facilities, high quality restaurant, a hotel, conference facilities and meeting spaces, this creates the missing components in this region.

"What good would more houses on the site do to the economy of the region? This gives confidence to a broad range of sectors and we feel it's a worthwhile project and isn't a standalone offering - there will be a community dividend. Realistically when this is developed you are looking at between 2,000 and 3,000 jobs on this site."

A total of 60 people are already working on the project, as the developers seek to further strengthen their offering.

"We are making a commitment here to market this project, and to create the jobs and skills and conditions that will attract investors. We are doing this with private money, without any assistance and we are doing it as best we know how, This is a regional offering. We made this model to show the entire city and surrounding districts."

Again praising the work done behind the scenes by William Hay, Mr Long concluded: "We took a very professional and clinical route to set out what we wanted to do and we have had meetings with William at Stormont, at his office and at the council. He was a team player for the town."

Mr Hay said: "This was never going to be about politics. No-one should play politics with such an important project. When I heard that the site was purchased, this meant people had real interest and there is huge potential here. I think there is the goodwill out there and that this project will bring something special not just to the city but to the North West as a whole."