The city of Southampton is pushing ahead with several major development schemes, putting the city firmly on property and construction firms’ radars, according to four major clients in the city.

Dawn Baxendale, chief executive of Southampton City Council, told a Built Environment Networking Event on ‘Southampton General Development Plans 2014’ at the city’s Novotel, that the city had been “well-hidden” for too long.

Baxendale said: “Southampton has been well-hidden, there’s no doubt about that, in terms of its location, its potential and the reality of what can be delivered here.

“I’m here to tell you not only is that very different today, but it is being done because we work very closely with, and in partnership with, the private sector.”

Baxendale provided updates on several major schemes, including the city’s long-awaited £400m Royal Pier Waterfront and £90m Watermark WestQuay schemes.

She revealed the city council is working with Royal Pier Waterfront joint developers ABP, Morgan Sindall and Lucent to get a planning application in for the huge scheme by January 2015.

Baxendale also confirmed the £90m first phase of Hammerson’s long-awaited Watermark WestQuay leisure and retail complex will start on site this autumn, adding this will “probably be in October”.

She also revealed the city council is working with Network Rail on a potential £35m mixed-use quarter to the south of the city’s railway station.

Associated British Ports (ABP), Southampton Solent University and Southampton Airport also shared their development plans.

ABP plans to invest £150m in the Port of Southampton over the next five years, a 50% increase on the last five year period, Southampton Solent University is planning a rolling series of developments at its East Park campus and Southampton Airport plans to invest £30m over the next three years and is currently updating its masterplan.

The four organisations discussed their development plans in detail –

SOUTHAMPTON CITY COUNCIL

Southampton has a population of 239,400 people, of which 36,665 are students. Two years ago Southampton City Council launched a £3bn masterplan to map out development up to 2026. Half of the finance for this has already been committed by developers. The 2026 masterplan envisages the city creating 110,000 sq m of offices, 100,000 sq m of retail, up to 30,000 sq m of leisure or food and drink space, up to 650 hotel bed spaces and 5,000 housing units. Around 2,500 of these housing units have already been built or have planning consent. Baxendale discussed some of the city’s major planned schemes –

Opportunities

  • Baxendale confirmed the £90m first phase of Hammerson’s long-awaited Watermark WestQuay leisure and retail complex will start on site this autumn, adding this will “probably be in October”. The phase comprises a 10 screen cinema, up to 20 restaraunts and a new piazza and is slated for completion in 2016. A later second phase will include a residential tower, hotel, flexible office space, restaraunts and public space.
  • The city council is working with ABP, Morgan Sindall and Lucent to bring forward a £400m regeneration scheme at Royal Pier Waterfront to “create a brand new waterfront for Southampton”. “We have a developer and the finance. We’re working with them closely to get a planning application in by January of next year. We anticipate that will be the jewel in our [city’s] crown,” Baxendale said. The nearby £33m Southampton Harbour Hotel – comprising of a 76-bed hotel and 82 apartments – by developer Nicholas James Group has won planning.
  • The city council is working with Network Rail to bring forward a £35m mixed-use scheme to redevelop the south side of Southampton rail station. Network Rail is currently on site on £5.6m of public realm works to the north of the station, but Baxendale believes “there’s far more round a whole station quarter that could be done in Southampton […] to reinvigorate a part of the city that is quite rundown.” Baxendale said the city was looking at Reading for inspiration.
  • Longer term, Baxendale describes Itchen Waterfront as Southampton’s “second waterfront”. The city council is in the market to assemble 100 acres of development land at Itchen for homes, employment, leisure and marine uses. The site is near Southampton FC’s St Mary’s Stadium.
  • The city council is still awaiting car maker Ford’s decision as to what to do with its old 25-hectare car plant site in the city. Baxendale said the authority is working on masterplanning with Ford and “we’ll want to see employment on there”.

ASSOCIATED BRITISH PORTS

Associated British Ports (ABP) owns 21 ports across the UK, across 5,000 hectares of port estate. One quarter of UK seaborne trade passes through ABP harbours. The client also owns 900 hectares of development land. Port of Southampton is the UK’s second largest container port, Europe’s largest turnaround cruise port, across four cruise ship terminals, and a major handling port for many goods, including cars and petrochemicals.

Opportunities

  • Over the next five years ABP plans to invest £150m in the Port of Southampton, up 50% on the last five year period’s figure of £100m.
  • ABP will invest £26m in upgrade works at all four of its existing cruise ship terminals – City, Mayflower, QE2 and Ocean – by 2016.
  • The client will also invest £19.2m in works at its vehicle import and exports docks over the next two years. Works will include dock upgrade works and rail freight investment. A tender has also gone out to build a sixth multi-deck car terminal, for delivery by October 2015.
  • Works planned for ABP’s commodities operations at the port include a £10m fruit terminal and a £6m revamp of its bulk operational stores.

Strategy

Clive Thomas, port manager of Port of Southampton at Associated British Ports (ABP), said: “The port is integral to the city, it’s a maritime city, it’s important we work closely with the City Council to support some of the goals the city have and we’re grateful for the support of the city in helping us support some of the development goals we have […] The port is an engine room for growth and an engine room for the Solent region. We have significant money set aside to invest in our port infrastructure.”

SOUTHAMPTON SOLENT UNIVERSITY

Southampton Solent University has over 20,000 students and 1,500 staff. Its roots stretch back 150 years. The university is spread across three campuses and it has 2,300 student beds across six residences. The university is part-way through a ten year campus investment programme to invest £70m into developments between 2008 and 2018. One of the university’s largest ever schemes is the Scott Brownrigg-designed £30m academic teaching building at its East Park campus, which is on site and scheduled for completion by contractor Interserve in December 2015. Professor Mike Wilkinson, deputy vice-chancellor of Southampton Solent University, said the university is in financial good shape and ready to invest in development. “We are a £110m income business, making surpluses of £6-7m a year […] so we’re very happy to say we’re in a condition where we can [invest in development].”

Opportunities

  • Southampton Solent University is considering building out more phases of its masterplan for East Park campus, to follow on from completion of the academic teaching building. The masterplan was worked up with EC Harris, Scott Brownrigg and AFR. Notionally the university plans to develop three more phases over the next five to ten year period. The first would be to demolish a low-rise building to the east of the campus to make way for new sport facilities. The next would be to fill in a quadrangle at the centre of the campus and to build a large atrium along the western edge of the campus to “tie together the whole building”. This phase, which would house a hub for student services, is currently being considered by the university’s board. A further phase would be to rehouse the campus’ martime and technology facilities elsewhere to enable the building that currently houses them to be demolished to make way for green space in the centre of the campus.
  • Longer term the university would like to “build further on the northern part of the site” on land acquired from other public clients. Options being considered include laboratory space for STEM subjects, buildings to rehouse teaching or student accommodation currently off-campus, an enterprise centre and/or a mixed-use scheme with a tall building, according to Wilkinson. However, Wilkinson said this and the earlier phases he discussed were “flexible and will be developed selectively depending on how our income goes”.
  • The university is “beginning to think about how we replace some of our student residences,” according to Wilkinson. He explained: “By the end of this decade our mortages will be running down and we’ll be getting to a point where a, we’ll have more money to invest and b, some of those residences will probably no longer be fit for purpose […] So that is a potential development opportunity.”

SOUTHAMPTON AIRPORT

Southampton Airport is aspiring to be “Europe’s leading regional airport”, according to David Lees, its managing director. It has a 12.6 million catchment area. The airport says 1.4 million people live within 30 minutes travel of the airport, while 3.5 million people live within 60 minutes travel. It is owned by Heathrow Airport Holdings, which as well as owning Heathrow and Southampton Airport, also owns Glasgow Airport and Aberdeen Airport.

Opportunities

  • The airport plans to invest £30m on development projects over the next three years, a three-fold increase on the £9m investment over the last three years. Schemes slated for that period include a replacement fire training facility, which will move forward in the latter part of this year. A proposed 100-bed hotel development on the airport site is also currently in pre-application and the airport hopes to “realise it within two years”.
  • Moving further out, the airport’s runway will need resurfacing in 2017-18 and the airport is considering adding in passenger piers in 2017-20, allowing more passengers to walk straight on to planes rather than transferring from the terminal by bus.
  • The airport is also critically evaluating whether to extend its runway to the north to increase the number of destinations it can fly to. It is also in the “early stages” of planning an “airport city”, dubbed “Southampton Aerotropolis”, inspired by similar schemes in the UK and elsewhere to locate businesses near airports, such as the planned Mancester Airport City.

Strategy

Southampton Airport plans to “refresh our masterplan over the next two years” and will be looking at planning “incremental development around our existing terminal” rather than a new terminal. The airport believes it is “well placed to capture future short haul demand an increasingly capacity constrained area south and west of London”.