Manchester is showing the way
I THOUGHT your readers might like to know about a proposed development currently being promoted in Manchester. The development is known as 'Airport City' and comprises a development of 56 hectares of land adjacent to Manchester Airport comprising of 1 million sq ft of offices, 1.4 million sq ft of logistics space, 380,000 sq ft of advanced manufacturing space and 2,400 new homes. The entire area has been designated as an Enterprise Zone.
The important word here is 'adjacent'. Whilst our own local authorities appear to be happy to see Filton Airport close down our northern friends see the huge job and economic benefits that an airport brings and are investing heavily in developing the areas that are close to and both feed off and benefit from the presence of the airport.
Cannot the powers that be and the various stakeholders not see what a huge mistake the closure of Filton Airport will be seen as in future years. The airport is a supra-regional infrastructure asset capable of benefiting the whole of the south west, south Wales and the midlands. The short sighted financial interests of the existing owners in the overall scheme of things are not of great relevance. Once the airport has gone it cannot be replaced.
In the early 1990's I was part of a consultancy team advising on the potential for the development of a new airport in the Severnside area with both the English and Welsh sides of the Bristol Channel under consideration. On paper it sounded a great idea as the flight path would have taken planes in and out straight over the Channel.
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This was a project that was discussed at the highest levels of government. The then Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine, in the end concluded that the development of any new airport was far too expensive and likely to be massively controversial on environmental and many other grounds. At this time it effectively became government policy that the expected growth in demand for airport travel would be met by expanding the existing airport infrastructure rather than developing any new airports. This has indeed turned out to be what has happened. It is also highly likely to remain the policy in the future.
So we move on and continue to observe other cities such as Manchester make the most of their assets whilst in the west country we allow ours to be destroyed. I could go on and mention other Manchester successes such as their arena, metro system, football stadia etc. Manchester is the type of city that we need to be competing with. Removing forever the huge potential asset that is Filton Airport will not help us in this quest.
David Foley
DJ Foley Property Consultants
Comments
by Bert_Hindle
Wednesday, January 16 2013, 12:48PM
“It's so, so true, David.
It's like we've given up caring here in Bristol.”