1. The Kingsway Priority Area within the Swansea City Centre Strategic Framework gets underway as the Council have bought and are preparing to demolish and rebuild as offices, the vast former Oceanna nightclub. This is to abut a new, planned, “pedestrian friendly” boulevard. The 1967-built Oceanna occupies a .55acre site once a famous part of the nighttime economy and where a new business and residential district for the city is to be located, initially kickstarted by the foresightful planned relocation there of about 1400 City & County office staff.

2. These staff are to be vacating the present City & County of Swansea administration building which is located on a prime 14 acre sea-front site that is being sold. Half a dozen developers are shortlisted to create high-end hotel accommodation, residential and leisure facilities there and which is to include a “feature” sea life centre. A further major development site of family-friendly leisure and residential accommodation ties into and sits behind this.

3. Higher Education expansion across the Tawe river is boosting city student numbers on a second, 65 acre site, nearing completion and having its first intake of students this autumn. Also sea-front, this is one of the few University Campuses in Britain to have its own beach. At £450m, the Bay Campus is the largest current educational institution property development project in Europe.

4. Swansea’s second  University of Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) is itself moving scattered city buildings into a focussed prime waterfront development at SA1 in a £100m project highly integrated with local technical, intellectual and business partners.

5. One must not forget the £1bn Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon which received assent in June. This is truly a triumph for the locality. It is a world-first of six energy lagoons intended for the UK and a maximum amount of the supplier labour and materials is designated to be sourced within and benefit the local economy. The lagoon shall produce for 125 years enough green energy to supply at present 185,000 homes.

6. Another first is the prototype technology BT describes as “the next stage in our story” that shall carry 500Mbps to 1Gbps broadband transmission speeds.  BT has chosen selected sites within Swansea as a first city to run a test bed for this technology to be known as “G.Fast” or “ultrafast”.

7. A minor addition for the modest city of Swansea is to have recently acquired a film studio creating high-end BBC drama such as Doctor Who, Torchwood and Da Vinci’s Demons that appears to be going from strength to strength.

It is this last entry that prompted me to write this notice. Things are moving apace, but quietly in Wales’ second city. For entrepreneurs interested in property the exciting area of present interest to my mind is to capture locations for development within the newly emerging redistribution of the City Centre. If you may be interested in this I can help; please let me know.

Michael