Cold property
It’s been a pretty grim week for the Birmingham commercial property sector.
My initial reaction on hearing about the Birmingham Development Company (BDC) and BuildAbility (BAL) going into administration was one of shock. I’m sure many of you felt the same.
Yes, we’d all heard rumours of it going over budget on The Cube development in Birmingham and of the architectural quirks of the Ken Shuttleworth-designed building making it a somewhat nightmarish construction project, but few suspected that the funders would pull the plug and that Alan Chatham and his team would be forced to call it a day.
Perhaps with hindsight, it might be considered hubris for a developer to set up its own construction firm. If so, the recession has proved its nemesis.
The level of shock was that much greater because the developer seems intrinsically linked with Birmingham’s future. In pre-BDC days, Chatham and his colleagues earned their spurs on Brindleyplace and BDC’s development of The Mailbox. Its extension at The Cube and future plans for the former Post & Mail building at Colmore Circus – which it bought last summer – put it at the very heart of regeneration and place-changing schemes in Birmingham city centre.
At least the administrators, after talking to other stakeholders in the scheme, are pressing on with The Cube, which is due to complete this year. The Highways Agency is supposed to be moving into 50,000 odd square feet of office space as early as May.
Another half-completed scheme in the city centre would have been difficult to cope with.
Ann Pedrick-Moyle being made redundant by BNP Paribas Real Estate also came as a shock. I have to declare an interest here, as Ann is a good friend of mine, but she also happens to be one of Birmingham’s best known and most respected office agents. My feeling is that if BNP Paribas can’t justify keeping someone like Ann on, the central Birmingham office market is in an even more dire state than we thought.
You may also have heard that one of the national trade magazines – Property Week – has cancelled its Midlands property awards in Birmingham this summer. Normally this is the sort of news that I would pass on while standing at the bar in Metro with a health dollop of schadenfreude attached. But it is hard to get too enthusiastic about news that just seems to add to the general gloom.
But if I might finish on a positive – if a somewhat self-congratulatory – note, Insider’s annual Midlands Property Awards will be going ahead this year as planned. It’s their tenth anniversary, which is something to celebrate in its own right. Let’s hope that by the time we meet at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole hotel at the NEC in late November, there’s some positive property market news to celebrate as well.
Andy Coyne, editor, Midlands Business Insider
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