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Look East towards a city that's riding the crest of a wave
JOHN Godber is a playwright of national acclaim, who will forever be associated with the Hull Truck Theatre Company.
I bumped into him last week during a business trip to his adopted city. When he moved to Hull two-and-a-half decades ago, he said the city was 10 years behind time. "Now it's about three," he told me.
Using that logic, Hull will soon be leading the way into the future. My recent experience suggests that there may be something in this.
Let's start with the basics.
Hull is located at the centre of the UK's east coast and is at the heart of the country's transport infrastructure.
Its ports have strong trade links with Europe, Scandinavia and the Baltic states and deep-sea locations worldwide. Hull has good road links to the rest of the UK and, despite a few too many traffic lights on the A63, is well connected to all points of the compass.
Whisper it, but there is a lot of interest in Hull and the Humber right now.
For instance, there is an intriguing development planned for the South Bank of the Humber.
The company in question, Able UK, wants to develop a massive ports and logistic hub on land north of Immingham, which it sees as strategically important for the UK.
Able said its proposals could create 5,000 jobs and attract 1.5bn of inward investment.
According to Neil Etherington, the group development director, Able is already exploring opportunities with a number of potential investors from the logistics, ports, distribution and storage sectors.
We can expect more news from those quarters soon.
Further inland, and staying with the theme that the area is on the way up, the city centre has seen a lot of money spent on regeneration projects.
Pride of place is the 200m St Stephen's shopping centre, a short walk from the train station, which has lots of high street names, several restaurants (including the Naked Fish, opening tomorrow, which hails from Bridlington) and the Reel Cinema.
Over the road is a plush House of Fraser, which occupies the former Hammonds department store and which recently underwent a 1.5m refit. Nearby is the splendid new home of the Hull Truck Theatre Company.
David Laycock, the centre manager at St Stephen's, is one of those leading the charge. Hull is in a renaissance, he said. On the waterfront, there is the shiny World Trade Centre, which is marketed as a one-stop shop for inward investment and for Hull firms looking to expand into new markets overseas.
Along the front is The Deep submarium, said to be one of the few lottery-funded projects ever to have made any money. Since opening in 2002, it has had more than two million visitors.
On the housing front, the managers of a new 26m fund for buying up distressed and mispriced residential property told me last week they are looking closely for bargains in Hull.
They consider that property in areas which benefit from regeneration efforts is likely to go up in value. They are probably right. I reckon John Godber is too, when he suggests that Hull is catching up.
BLACKFRIAR, our City columnist, spoke out last week in defence of Andy Hornby, the former head of Halifax Bank of Scotland, and now the newly-anointed chief executive of Boots Alliance. Blackfriar said: "Hornby is an honest, decent man who was out of his depth. He has accepted the blame and now he deserves a second chance."
That was guaranteed to generate a response from you, dear readers.
Michael Green, of Pudsey, was the first to get in touch. He said: "I wouldn't dream of quarrelling with Blackfriar's assessment of Andy Hornby as 'an honest, decent man', not least because I have never met the guy. But since when does a man who was 'out of his depth' in a job which nobody made him apply for in the first place, 'deserve a second chance'?
"Particularly when the job was at the buck-stops-here level, and he has presided over the destruction of a once-great organisation.
"It seems to me, as an interested outsider, that British business far too often appoints people who have signally failed in their previous employment, on the pretext that it can't really have been their fault.
"No real difference from politics, then!"
A point well made, Mr Green. When it comes to rewards for failure, we British are simply world class.
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Tuesday 22 May 2012
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