Could Welsh Water Celtic Springs Business Park buy cause Grade A headache for Newport?

THE news of the purchase by Welsh Water of 28 West at Celtic Springs Business Park is as unexpected as it is welcome and is another building block in the increasing confidence in Newport as a place to invest and do business.

The £9m, 35,000 sq ft office block, previously known as CS 3000, was speculatively built by AWG Property and Robert Hitchins in a joint venture on the back of a surge of interest in the £100m business park.

The three-storey, six-wing building has created a fair amount of interest, from both the private and public sectors, over the six years that it has been ready for occupation but that time coincided with the property sector flat lining.

Now, the Grade A office has been acquired by Welsh Water and 400 of its workers are set to move in shortly, there is now a distinct dearth of the quality of office space to tempt others to join the party here in Newport.

Although, I understand, the owners of the building are said to have had to part with the office block for a lower return than they had hoped, it is nevertheless a sign that at long last things are improving.

This welcome news, after all, came on the back of another impressive coup for the city, this time a letting, of Norwich House, 1 & 2 Gold Tops, Newport, by Network Rail and ABC Elecrtrification.

The 8,038 sq ft letting, one of the largest in a decade in the city, will see more than 100 highly-skilled people occupy the building as part of the rail electrification project for the South Wales mainline.

The former headquarters for Newport Unlimited is said to be ideal for the project, located, as it is, overlooking the Newport’s railway station. It was available in the right place at the right time.

The same can be said for the 28 West. But what of the future?

As a result of Admiral shifting its staff from Langstone Business Park to its new regional headquarters building on Queensway Newport there are two grade A office blocks available - Guinevere, 27,000 sq ft and Excalibur House, 11,735st ft.

To be able to act quickly and engage ‘footloose’ tenants with the product that they want then this kind of grade A office accommodation, has to be available.

Had 28 West not been available, Welsh Water would have had to have looked elsewhere to our loss.

However, as it is, Newport will benefit from the fact that the blue chip company has chosen to buy this iconic building on the city’s flagship business park and to bring 400 people to the city.

It’s now up to the city centre to make itself as attractive as possible so that these and others recently locating to the city, spend money here rather that in rival centres and Newport can benefit from the “multiplier effect.”

If we want to encourage more of the same to do likewise in the city we need more speculatively-built office blocks to be constructed so that they are available when occupiers come calling.

There is more land available at Celtic Springs Business Park.

The central plateau is empty.

Not so long ago planning permission was granted for a headquarters building on that site for another blue chip utilities business.

In the end nothing came of that but it remains a fact that the prospect had seen all the benefits of locating to such a well positioned spot on Junction 28 of the M4 with a population of some 857,000 within a 30 minute drive time of the site providing a readily-accessible, highly-skilled workforce and greater labour pool than either Bristol or Cardiff.

When you look at the announcement of the Gateway office scheme close to the central railway station in Cardiff and various other proposals for grade A office developments in the city, it can be seen that Cardiff is planning for the future.

Although Newport has always struggled to compete with Cardiff as an office destination for multi-national companies, the need for grade A space here must not be overlooked.

Funding such developments, especially in Newport , has always been an issue, even in better economic times and thus it may be time to investigate public sector appetite to assist such a proposed scheme, as the city council has done with the Friars Walk retail and leisure scheme, to ensure that Newport can build on its current investment success and is not left behind when companies are considering locating in the South Wales region.