Lingfield vision defies downturn
Oct 17 2008 By Sue Scott, Evening Gazette
THE downturn in the housing market and the threat of imminent recession will not throw the visionary Lingfield Point development off course, the boss behind Tees Valley’s ambitious eco village said.
Despite as much as a 15% premium on the cost of building green homes, John Orchard, director of Marchday developers, which yesterday launched its biggest commercial project yet at the site, said: “We are subject to market forces the same as everybody else, but I certainly do not see the fact that we are building sustainable homes as a handicap because there is a genuine desire to live in them.”
Lingfield Point - a £100m, 15-year development, which began in the late Nineties - only recently included plans for social housing and open market homes. It represents the company’s first foray into the currently severely depressed domestic market.
But Mr Orchard was bullish about the development.
“The sustainable housing framework is moving in the right direction,” he said, but he predicted a weakening of resolve among developers elsewhere.
“The housebuilders in a bullish market were not feeling too aggrieved about the way things were going. But we are entering a different market now where absolutely every penny will be looked at and adding 10-15% to build costs will come under an awful lot of scrutiny and is bound to affect the viability of some schemes.”
He said green technology would become an increasingly important component in Marchday’s development plans.
“A key part of the future business is green technologies,” he said. “We are lucky in that we have an existing business community (at Lingfield Point) that we are building around. The success of that community is fundamental because it is an existing client business. We could put in a wind turbine and combined heat and power plant and it would probably be viable from day one.”
He revealed the company was already in talks with public utility providers about generating green energy on the site.
Capital finance for the leisure and housing elements of the site will be entirely dependent on revenue generation from commercial properties at Lingfield Point, including the previously launched Beehive and the 47,000 sq ft Meadow office suite brought to the market this week.
“Every success we have allows us to look to the future and reinvest in the site,” said Mr Orchard. “Without the success of Meadow and the Beehive we would not be able to move forward.”
