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

The City & County of Swansea is under a new, dynamic leadership (since autumn 2014) led by Counci Leader Rob Stewart that has brought to the fore plans to reform the shape of the entire city over the next five years.

These plans are good news for investors and offer up significant development opportunities.

Civic investment shall be harnessed in collaboration with private investment into areas of use that designate defined sectors of commercial, business, the night time economy, the family-friendly economy, waterside and city living.

Significant partner investors are already shortlisted and negotiating with the City & County of Swansea in respect of developing two of these areas.

This planed evolution of the city is also in line with the aspirations of the newly formed Regional Authority.

The Swansea Bay City Region which was established in July 2014 has as its stated aims for the city that Swansea shall develop into a “powerhouse” for the region.

And further worth noting are a mix of powerful, local projects independent of these particular political trends. Foremost of these to note at present is a pioneering £1bn engineering start-up in the form of a Tidal Lagoon that looks likely to derive sustainable power from Swansea Bay for 120 years, although this awaits the final approval of the Secretary of State on June 6^th. Subject to this last step of approval, the lagoon project will be a world first, operational by 2018 and the first of six planned for the UK.

If you are looking in particular for developments in Swansea to establish early in this tide of development, commercial-to-residential projects in the £1m to £3m band, I shall be interested in working with you to help you achieve this.

If these may be your target projects, please get in touch.

Big things are happening in the South West Wales regional economy.

Listed in no particular order of merit, the first is the appointment onto the board of the Swansea Bay Region as chairman of billionaire Sir Terry Matthews.

The Swansea Bay Region is a recently new regional layer of administration inaugurated in July 2013. The board meets bi-monthly.

Sir Terry is Wales’ richest man, a go-getting individual who brings considerable commercial nous to the authority in addition to contacts that enable things to happen at the highest level.

Sir Terry made his fortune in telecommunications and in respect of property bought the Celtic Manor Hotel for £275,000.00, which he developed over thirty years into the biggest hotel in Wales, a resort of International standing. It has 700 staff, takes 5000 guests over a week at 85% occupancy with the presidential suite costing £2556 for 2 nights. Last year’s figures saw the business £474,000.00 ahead of budget for the half-year. The resort succeeded in bringing the Ryder Cup to Wales and has also hosted UK Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Obama amongst other world leader delegates who attended the 2014 NATO Summit there. Sir Terry is perhaps one of the best development mentors South West Wales could have!

He first took the chair of the Swansea Bay Region board meeting in November 2014.

Sit Terry’s appointment coincided with a fresh and replacement leadership in the City and County of Swansea itself within the same period. The new Council leader Rob Stewart has the approachable qualities of an individual who grew up in Morriston and combines with the business expertise amongst the likes of Robert Francis-Davies as Cabinet Member for Enterprise and the new administration have created an entirely positive change of culture and attitude for the Council into an enabling one. The new broom sweeps clean, they say!

Swansea Council has consequently brought forward plans long latent, into the formal adoption of the City Centre Strategic Framework, for which see my next article.

The plan basically, is to develop Swansea into a formidable “powerhouse” for the South West Wales region.

Sir Terry has engineered contributory efforts, in particular gathering as volunteer contributors to the design, International urban designers from as far afield as Italy and Sydney in Australia.

Swansea is looking now at the most ambitions and exciting developments in twenty years, proposed to be rolling out progressively over the next five. These circumstances pose considerable opportunities for private investors, but in particular as far as I am concerned I see opportunities for those perhaps either side of the £1m mark or above, typical London buyers who may wish to escape falling yields there and the South East. Please contact me if you shall wish to explore positioning your investment strategy onto this gathering tide.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 500 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 8 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.