Wednesday 5 September 2018

Cheeky bastards

From yesterday’s City AM:

Property heavyweights vent frustration in light of new Crossrail delays

Senior property executives expressed anger and frustration at the delay in the opening of Crossrail, as it emerged the postponement of the new line could result in a series of setbacks for London developers.

Emoov research carried out for City AM suggests property values could sink by as much as £10,000 in the short term, with hopes that falling house prices would rise after the Elizabeth Line’s opening now being put on hold.

Meanwhile, with the £15 bn project’s launch being pushed back from December this year to Autumn 2019, commercial developers within London’s West End are also worried that an eagerly-awaited bump in retail footfall will come nine months later than expected.

“We were massively disappointed when we found this out. For our retail side it is probably far more damaging, as a lot of their business models were based on new customers coming in. It’s tough enough for these guys at the moment being squeezed by business rates,” said Jace Tyrrell, whose firm New West End represents retail giants along Bond Street and Oxford Street.

He added: “We’ve known for some time there would be issues but never to this extent.”

Last week Ireland’s largest hotel group Dalata unveiled plans for a £91m new site in Aldgate, with deputy chief executive Dermot Crowley saying the transport links were a large factor in the decision to move to the area.

However, Crowley told City AM yesterday that while the delay does not change their investment decision, “it is frustrating when things like this get delayed – you’re told one day it’ll be ready in three months, and you find out the next day it’s 12 months.”

9 comments:

MikeW said...

'Cheeky bastard'.

:) Yep, not a lot you can add.

But I guess it means, if you wish, you can build an Excel spread sheet model of Government/ society uplift effects sensitive to month on month changes. One for the economists I suppose: Georgism/LVT = easy to measure.

Lola said...

Snort. Irony bypass.

Mark Wadsworth said...

MW trickier than you think.

L, absolutely no self of self awareness. They can't see themselves through other people's eyes.

mombers said...

Maybe a compensation scheme? Since they have been billed £0 per month for CrossRail, a refund of 9 x £0 could be given.

Mark Wadsworth said...

M, good idea.

(In fairness, Boris, in his infinite wisdom, put a surcharge on Business Rates for the duration, which did pay for 10% or so of the cost of Crossrail).

mombers said...

MW, let's leave aside that the landlord bears Business Rates. But if they want compensation, they'd have to point to an actual cheque that they're writing...
They could encourage their tenants to ask for a reduction in BR but there's no point as they won't be able to recoup any higher rent as a result of the lease agreement

mombers said...

Maybe the landlords can help themselves a bit and offer temporary rent reductions? Lest some of their tenants go bust and they have to swallow a void and subsequent rent reduction?

Physiocrat said...

Crap scheme, though, and a good example of mission creep. The identified need was to solve the shortage of capacity on the Metropolitan between Paddington and Liverpool Street. Thus some new east-west route was needed. A new tube from Paddington (Westbourne Park) to Liverpool Street was all that was required. As that would not have been a logical route, it could have followed the Crossrail alignment, and been extended to Hammersmith on the Metropolitan Line and to Stratford where it would have joined the Jubilee Line and run back to Stanmore ie it would have crossed over itself at Bond Street, with services from Hammersmith to Stanmore.

As a tube with 4-rail electrification, a 3.5 metre diameter tunnels, it would have cost a fraction of Crossrail with 6 metre tunnels, and would have been complete and running 15 years ago.

Physiocrat said...
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