I thought I'd start a thread on this to discuss so we can discuss the relative merits of the zone and whether it is working - or will work - as a concept to attract inward investment and help fuel Cardiff's growth.

I appreciate we have other threads for specific aspects of the development of the zone (Central Square, Callaghan Square, Capital Quarter) so this is more to do with how the zone is working overall.

this is the Welsh Government's website promoting the zone/CBD. After almost two years since inception, we've yet to see any new office development, relocation or inward investment. However, WG and CCC have purchased large swathes of land across the zone and have recently announced ambitious plans to kickstart development.

Look at the rating of the CEZ in the LDP: Strategic Site (A)
Cardiff Central Enterprise Zone and Regional Transport Hub;
"Major employment-led initiative including a Regional Transport Hub together with other mixed uses in Cardiff city centre in order to fulfil Cardiff’s role as economic driver of the city-region, provide major employment opportunities focused on financial and business services and maximise the advantages of its location adjacent to the Central Station and Cardiff Bus Station."
The horse-trading that extended the CEZ over Central Sq and the Stadium is making planning stupid - like his predecessor (Berman) Goodway proposes to cram office blocks into a Square that should be a pedestrianised public space with public transport interchange, catering for the Millenium Stadium crowds. Incompatible with cars to offices and the existing ms car park which should go to the south side of the railway (with most taxis). Goodway conceived the Callaghan Sq business zone but now gives no priority to completing it (while the Dumballs Rd extension looks to be vanishing).

There is a good peice on 'Construction Enquirer'today about Cardiff council calling for bids to be submitted for the Conference center....check it out guys

Links are useful...

here you go

The Cardiff Enterprise Zone was defined for "financial services". An indoor arena and convention centre surely does not comply.

Previously Central Sq was designated for an integrated public transport interchange and public square. Under the CEZ designation, the latter function disappears and the bus station could be to service the businesses, with subsidiary use as part of the public transport network.

What information have the LDP people required/accepted for Strategic Site designation - and through the site nomination process or some 'special arrangement'?

Jantra, i do apoligise, i dont know how to set up a link....not done one as of yet, im new to this...

If its easy to explain how to do a 'link' on here can somebody explain?....i probably would use them a lot as im allways trawling the web world for Cardiff developments....cheers guys

Hi Christopher.

Type the URL between the following two bits of text

'url'

and '/url', but surround the url and /url with square brackets instead of quotes it should work

For example :

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/

should provide a link to the waleonline home page. If you do a 'quote' rather than a standard reply to a forum post you should, if I remember correctly, see the URL markup within the original post

Now this is exactly we want to see in this financial and professional services enterprise zone. Hopefully we will find the rumours in this article are true and Deloitte are indeed bring several hundred jobs over the next few years to the city.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/deloitte-expected-confirm-several-hundred-6206626

More of this is needed and will give me a little bit of confidence in the scheme. It'll obviously boost the office market and may mean one of the planned schemes becomes pre-let.

Fingers crossed.

This has been in the pipeline for a while but is still good news. If they were to DIY or headcount to 600 then that would require a standalone office block of 60-70,000 sqft depending on how plush they were feeling

This is also good as it makes Cardiff a centre of excellence and brings wealth into the city, not just from the uk but around the globe.

Fingers very much crossed on this one

@max

Apologies if I've read your thread wrong, but are you saying rightacres is going to be 600,000 sqft of office space?

The Deloitte news is official, but the numbers are far lower than the rumours above!



 DELOITTE EXPANSION 

Looks like the initial article was talking about the longer term... the head of Deloitte in Cardiff talks about "over the next few years [the] Cardiff operation, as well as the 100 jobs confirmed, could create potentially hundreds more." Now this isn't confirmation by any means, but it would be risky for him to hint at more jobs if there wasn't a real chance of more. It would be great if we could get additional jobs from the big 4. Deloitte, KPMG and PwC all have offices in Cardiff, but I don't think any is especially big. In part this reflects the relatively small business base in the city. But it also reflects the fact that, to date, we haven't been especially successful at attracting broader regional, national or international functions. If this changed, and we had offices of 400+ rather than 100-200 (with the exception of Deloitte which is about 300) from these players, it would be a good thing. It would also be good to get EY in the city - they currently don't have a base.

The big thing the WG and all the developers are hoping for is a relocation of back and mid-office functions for a financial services firm from Greater London. Cardiff is one of three locations being considered (The others are likely to be Belfast and Newcastle if its purely focussed on cost, or could be Manchester and Leeds if also considering graduate pool and lifestyle issues for relocating staff), and around 1,000 jobs are at stake. That is between 70,000 and 120,000 sq foot depending on plushness.

Does 100 jobs constitute success?