Chester Development Plans 2015

FOUR of Chester’s leading development figures will be presenting their investment/development plans for the next few years!

Event Sponsored by:                  Programme Sponsored by: 

Event Format

• 1530 – 1600; Registration
• 1600 – 1645; Networking with Wine, Beer and Soft Drinks
• 1645 – 1815; Speaker Presentations
• 1815 – 1900; Networking with Hot Food, Wine, Beer and Soft Drinks
• 1930 – 2200; After Event Dinner (INVITE ONLY)

Speakers

Gemma Davies; Senior Manager for Economic Growth, Cheshire West & Chester Council

Professor Tim Wheeler; Vice Chancellor & Principal, University of Chester

After lectureships in Psychology and Communications at Sheffield Hallam University in the 1970s, Tim Wheeler became Dean of the Faculty of Communication and Human Studies at Dublin City University and, in 1985, Professor and Head of the School of Social Studies at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.

Combined with a period as Senior Visiting Research Scholar at St. John’s College, Oxford, he was Head of the Department of Communication and Media at Bournemouth University, moving to the then Southampton Institute in 1991, becoming Acting Director and Chief Executive in 1997.

Much of his work has involved academic and industrial consultancies, in addition to experience in Europe, America and Australia.  He was appointed Principal of University College Chester in 1998 and became the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Chester in 2005.  He has published over a 100 articles, books and research reports in a diverse range of areas including psychopharmacology, dyslexia, communications and safety.

He was formerly deputy chair of UCAS and was an executive member of the North West Regional Assembly and Chair of the North West Universities’ Association. He is a Deputy Lieutenant for Cheshire and is actively involved with Chester Cathedral.  He is married with three daughters, lives in Cheshire and enjoys music, theatre and the arts.

Phil Mayall; Development Director, Muse Developments

Phil joined Muse Developments in 2006 to assist with the delivery of the company’s mixed use regeneration portfolio and was promoted to development director in 2011. Phil currently has two large mixed use schemes under construction in the North West; New Bailey which is situated in Salford adjacent to Spinningfields and City Place Chester.

City Place is a 3.5 acre speculative development which will play an important part in the city’s very first Central Business Quarter.

The first phase of the development includes a six-storey 70,000 sq ft BREEAM ‘Excellent’ office building, One City Place, which is currently on site and due for completion in November 2015. It marks the first building of seven as by 2028, it is planned that Chester’s Central Business Quarter will offer a total of 440,000 square feet of state-of-the art office space – housed in seven office blocks – creating around 3,500 jobs.

Neil Bennett; Partner, Farrells, HS2 Superhub Station

Neil is lead partner at Farrells, the architecture and planning practice, for strategic infrastructure and urban design. He has a wealth of experience in the creative and enabling aspects of place-shaping and built environment projects, and is currently advising both public and private sector clients on the impact of some of UK’s major planned infrastructure investments.

Neil is currently responsible for the strategic vision for Park Royal International – the regeneration of a substantial area of West London around the proposed integrated transport interchange at Old Oak Common with HS2, and is also advising South Cheshire Council on the wider regenerative effects of high speed rail across the North Midlands, in and around Crewe

Passionate about the need to dissolve the silos of transport, economic and spatial planning, Neil is a strong advocate of network thinking – joining together all our systems.

Much of Neil’s work has been informed by Farrell’s unique experience of designing some of the world’s largest high speed rail hubs, including West Kowloon in Hong Kong, Beijing South and Guangzhou in China, and Incheon in Seoul.