Council would have the opportunity to pull out at pre- tender stage if the tender price was above an estimated cost contained in the legal documents.


Needless to say, the tender price for the shell was higher than anticipated and there were some hasty negotiations to resolve the issue, as Centros did not want to redesign their complete scheme to fill the hole that would have resulted if the Council pulled out. In retrospect, if we hadn’t settled on a way forward, the subsequent delay obtaining a new planning permission could easily have resulted in no redevelopment scheme happening at


all, as we were about to hit the


property slump. All credit to the Council elected members for remaining committed to building a new venue, Paul Ellis and colleagues at (then) Donaldsons, and Centros, in coming up with a cunning solution to solve this financial shortfall (sorry folks, confidential information!).


Progress and more “challenges”


Legal “challenges”


The basis of ownership should have been the typical one of a simple 150 year ground lease of the commercial scheme (anchor Debenhams, 35 shops, 62 flats) in its discrete land area, with the Council retaining the freehold of the venue. Oh, and by public demand, the scheme was also now to include an underground car park which the Council would manage.


For anyone who attended my ACES Presidential Conference in 2006, we had a whole session on the cattle market redevelopment, which was at this stage in the process. Stephen Christy from Mills & Reeve gave a very entertaining explanation of the legal complexities that were now required to deal with these layered property interests which our architect friends had master planned.


His solution was a principal head lease to Centros, who would pay the Council a geared ground rent, then grant peppercorn underleases of the underground car park and the public venue back to the Council. I make it sound easy, but there were over 400 pages of documentation which I remember ploughing through (version 8, I recall) on Boxing Day. truly a nightmare.


Procurement “challenges” So how does the Council procure the construction of its specialist public venue (which has to be an absolutely soundproof brick box within a block of property) when it is wrapped around by a commercial scheme? This was another challenge to be met.


construction in the developer’s building contract. However, the Council could not be bound by an open ended tender price enforced on it, and equally Centros did not want to be responsible for completing a building outside of its “comfort zone” of building shops and flats.


The procurement answer was that Centros would build the shell of the public venue – simply put, the brick box – under an EU tendered joint contract and the Council would subsequently procure another contract for the fit out. The


48


It was


The only solution was to include its


As you can see from the photos, the public venue is complex and the total cost was £18.6 million. Helped with an EEDA grant and a developer contribution (a hint), it was eventually completed and opened to the public in autumn 2010. The commercial scheme had been up and running since spring 2009, so it was wonderful to finally see the scaffolding leave the public square and surrounding shops.


We certainly faced challenges along the way. These included continuing to meet the exacting standards of the signature architects, Hopkins, and the financial implications of that, the problems of split procurement of the shell and fit-out contracts which caused more delays, obtaining top specialist acoustic advice (from a really nice man called Carl who lives in Chicago!) and the unfortunate insolvency of the locally based


THE TERRIER - Autumn 2011


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