St James Securities swinging back into action

The Leeds-based company, which was behind the city's Round Foundry business district and the St Paul's Place development in Sheffield, plans to develop a number of supermarket-led retail schemes in Yorkshire and the North-East and has appointed Paul Morris, a well-known figure in the city, to spearhead the expansion drive.

The company has taken a back seat since 2007 due to the property downturn but believes now is the time to pick up the pace.

Mr Morris, 43, said: "This is the time we should really be looking to bring forward developments, while we are at the bottom of the curve going on to the upswing."

He added: "It's no surprise that we are concentrating on schemes that are retail-led regeneration because it's retail that starts to improve above other sectors."

The company, which is funding the developments through a combination of its own capital reserves, bank loans and alternative sources of funding such as private equity, hopes to submit planning on at least three of the schemes this year.

Mr Morris said: "Now is the time when there is an awful lot of realism about. Landowners are being realistic about working with us and....see us as being a very good development partner to add value to their land.

"It also means that many people have come and gone so the competition for land isn't as fierce. We are able to work more closely with parties and get them to feel as though we're doing it as a partnership rather than just as a developer trying to do a quick turn on a piece of land."

Mr Morris is the former director and head of development and agency at property agents Lambert Smith Hampton in Leeds. More recently, he worked for property entrepreneur Simon Morris – no relation – whose company collapsed in 2008 with 50m of debts.

Morris Properties was the subject of a three-year inquiry by the The Serious Fraud Office over claims Morris's company sold 'buy-to-let' properties at inflated prices which left the buyers unable to cover mortgage payments when expected rental income did not materialise.

The investigation was dropped last year on the ground of insufficient evidence.

Paul Morris said he was not involved in the residential side of the business which led the company to collapse. He joined the company in 2007 to grow the commercial division.

"During my tenure there I had

a very good relationship with Simon Morris and there was nothing that went on in that company that I was aware of that was anything other than legitimate," he said.

However, Mr Morris, who lost his job when the company collapsed, said he learned a number of lessons from his experience.

"I learned that banks, on the one hand, are your friends when things are good and they have a different face when things start to go wrong," he said.

He added: "The one thing I took away, which probably was one of the hardest things, was dealing with the staff.

"At the peak of that business we employed over 100 people. I had to slim that down to 30 and, before the final demise, we were down to about 20 people.

"Having to make all those redundancies, and the bulk of those were just before Christmas in 2007, is probably the hardest thing that I've ever been involved with. Keeping the finger in the dam, trying to keep the water from coming out in terms of the money and the banking facilities, also ranked up there very hard. But you learn from these things."

Looking to the future, Mr Morris predicted 2011 would be another difficult year for commercial property, particularly in the occupational market, which remains tough.

He said: "The industrial market seems to be improving but the office market is still very much in the doldrums. I don't see a significant improvement in the office market this year.

"I think in reality we'll start to see some real recovery on the office market going into 2012. My view to sum up 2011 is be positive and get on with it.

"Sitting there and whinging about it isn't going to help anybody."

Appointment a step forward

Paul Morris qualified as a chartered surveyor in 1992 and has been practising in the development and agency fields within Yorkshire and the North East of England for over 20 years.

He was formerly director and head of development and agency at property agents Lambert Smith Hampton in Leeds and went on to become commercial director of Morris Properties.

For the last two years he has run his own property company.

Mr Morris, 43, lives in Adel, near Leeds. He studied urban estate management at Glamorgan University.

Roland Stross, director of St James Securities, said: "After a couple of years of concentrating on our existing development portfolio we are now back on the acquisition and development trail. Paul's appointment is a significant step forward for the company."