New plans for city site
A PRIME city centre site in Yorkshire could be unlocked for development with new powers being handed to local authorities.
The development of the 35 acre York Central site was a casualty of the economic downturn but the city’s council is looking at ways of breathing new life into the scheme.
Options include using tax increment financing (TIF), a new power for councils to borrow against business rates generated from investment in infrastructure, to help overcome access problems to the site which have raised the costs and risks for potential developers.
Council leader James Alexander told TheBusinessDesk.com that funding the work through traditional council borrowing would lead to repayments representing “a large amount of revenue in an age of austerity”.
“The private sector is not taking huge risks on these kinds of developments and that’s why we are looking at TIF as an option. We recognise the opportunity it brings to be able to borrow against future business rates and pay back over a longer period of time.
“There’s no doubt there will be significant risk to the council but it’s the right thing to do. We need ambitious local authorities to work with the private sector and get developments off the ground.”
York Central is next to the city’s train station with Network Rail, the National Railway Museum and City of York Council each owning parcels of land.
Four years ago, Network Rail and the NRM together with regional development agency Yorkshire Forward launched a hunt for a development partner but it was abandoned in 2009.
The cost of providing better access to the site, which is surrounded by rail lines, has been put at around £65m although the council is now considering whether new routes could be phased in with the first costing around £10m.
In addition to TIF, the Government is also giving councils the ability to retain portions of their business rates which could also play a part at York Central.
Coun Alexander said that while systems would be in place to limit how much councils such as York would benefit, “we are still confident that there will be some gains that can kickstart small projects or be a contributory factor towards projects needed in the city.”
A range of uses has been proposed for the site and Coun Alexander suggested leisure operators might be approached to see how the area could be used to capitalise on the millions of tourists visiting York every year.
“We might want certain things from this site in terms of certain levels of housing, for example, but we’ve got to be able to allow leeway that takes into account the market conditions that will be there at the time.”
The council is pursuing several initiatives aimed at supporting the economy, including the creation of a new £28.5m Enterprise Infrastructure Fund.
