HS2: Why the race is on for Nottingham

HS2 sounds like a fabulous opportunity for Nottingham. But we also have to recognise that it’s a potentially significant competitive threat.
So may be the fact that it’s 20 years away is not necessarily a bad thing.
Examining the route it will take tells you three things: that the project is almost certain to run into opposition from people whose properties are likely to be bulldozed out of the way, and that it is an extremely ambitious civil engineering project.
In the East Midlands alone, the route tunnels directly underneath the runway at East Midlands Airport, under the M1 at two points, over rivers, through residential areas.
The third thing? If it stays anywhere near on budget I’d be amazed.
But the challenge. Being 51 minutes from London, just over 20 from Birmingham and a similar sprint to Leeds sounds like a major opportunity. And that’s the way it should be seen – an opportunity to get across the benefits of Nottingham to cities and conurbations suffering the economic and social pressures of crowding and expense.
And the benefits of Greater Nottingham and beyond and as a business and leisure destination: brilliant transport infrastructure, an international centre for life sciences research, a global centre for data analytics expertise, what should by then be a burgeoning digital/creative quarter, a thriving enterprise zone, clean technology expertise, and proximity to the high-tech engineering giant that is Derby.
HS2 could solve staffing problems for some of our indigenous businesses, too, putting them in touch with a wider pool of talent.
But HS2 also means the pressure is on Nottingham yet again to get itself into an attractive shape as a place to live and thrive – great shopping and leisure, first-rate visitor attractions, high-quality schools, a clean and safe environment.
We need that major retail development to happen so that Broadmarsh gets tidied up and the Victoria Centre modernised. We need to make the most of the castle and Robin Hood. And what about a Museum of east Midlands Industry somehwere between Nottingham and Derby (may be nearer Derby, because of a heritage that stretches from Arkwright to the best jet engines in the world)?
Much has been achieved here over the years. But HS2 means we will be compared with bigger, better places and raises the bar.
It isn’t just a train that’s barrelling down that high-speed line. It’s a big challenge.

MIPIM 2012: The next time round I'd...

Travel lighter. The smart delegates were one-bag only. Clothes were smart-casual and therefore multi-purpose, while laptops have been comprehensively killed-off by iPads. It’s not that laptops are necessarily technically inferior (though they’re slower to fire up than anything Apple), it’s that when you have to take them out of a laptop case when they go through the airport scanners they are a real faff.
Take an iPad. They are single-handedly killing off laptops and netbooks because they are easy to carry, fire up immediately, run graphics brilliantly and act like a portable office while looking both stylish and professional. The Russians may have sprayed millions at their stands, but the wow factor for me came from Manchester Airport Group’s Stephanie Mullenger, who clipped a laser-cut 3D model of a development on to the screen of her iPad and ran a movie which lit up different parts of the model from underneath while giving a detailed commentary. That’s ‘Think Different’ in action.
Drink more water. Unless you are jetset, corporate or from a Russian republic, you will be chasing meetings morning, noon and night. Breakfast is grabbed, late-night dinner devoured. In between, it’s a desert where you might just be able to grab a table at Café Roma if you’re willing to fight off the foreign hordes.
Walk nonchalantly across pedestrian crossings. English diffidence meant I hesitated when a blacked-out Bentley came at me when I was halfway across. If I’d displayed Gallic indifference the turbo-nutter batard would have stopped sooner. I resorted to a traditional salute to stop him.
Hire a park bench. Yacht for the week - £80-£100k; Stand in the Palais des Festival - £40-50k if you want room for a table; park bench – you could pay someone to hold it for you for a lot less. Alternatively, you could do what the Germans did and live up to your cultural cliché. They took over part of the beach…
Forget to tell people who I was meeting. Because they blag their way in and hog the person you need to talk to.
Get in training for Morrisons. The Irish bar a couple of streets back from the seafront may not be the last word in clubland, but its combination of 80s disco and Guinness is still enough to finish you of after a day pounding pavements.
Bug the Derby dinner. There was a frank exchange of views, I’m told.
Take ear plugs. You know who you are...

MIPIM: Another away win for Nottingham

It began in Derby, wandered through some of the best cities for business in Europe, and ended in a pizzeria not far from the yachts that bob up and down in Cannes harbour.

Such was the second day at MIPIM.
I reflected yesterday on what Nottingham had to offer the biggest property and development exhibition in Europe, but today began with a breakfast reception for what is grandly characterised as the Derby Embassy, the slogan for the travelling show that is Marketing Derby.
Unlike Nottingham, Derby has managed to pull together a comparatively substantial public sector budget which supports not just the activities of Marketing Derby but a walloping chunk of commercial projects ranging from phase one of a spec office development in Derby (elsewhere, no one digs earth without a prelet) through to a comprehensive revamp of Derby City Council’s HQ, and half the lease of the old Egg call centre (a deal which has enabled Indian-owned Hero TSC to set up a similar operation in the same building).
Fair play to Derby. It punches above its weight at an exhibition where many similarly sized conurbations simply don’t figure, and has a cohesive message which other locations will be jealous of (notably Leicester, which I’ll come on to in a moment).
The strength of its focus has already been well-illustrated by its refusal to take the decision which lost Bombardier’s Derby factory a huge rail contract lying down, and the fuss it made has almost single-handedly led to government looking again at the whole issue of large-scale public procurement rules.
Leicester, by contrast, is a curiosity. This is another substantial Midlands city which has a strong economy with plenty of hefty businesses and logical opportunities. So why isn’t it at MIPIM? The few people from Leicester who are here certainly felt jealous of what Nottingham and Derby are up to, wondering why there was no marketing material about their own city to hand out.
England’s provincial cities do get noticed at MIPIM because they talk tangible opportunities rather than grand, barely believable visions. Birmingham and Manchester have thrown several hundred grand at their presence and there is an expectation that they will be here.
Even though its presence is comparatively small-scale and supported by the city council rather than paid for, Nottingham’s presence has been discreetly effective. It made headlines on one of the big property consultancy stands, and it was rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest locations in Europe yesterday when it received an award as one of the best micro cities for business.
The award came from FDi Intelligence, a division of the Financial Times, and ranked Nottingham ahead of Geneva as a business-friendly location.
Stockholm, which won the main FDi award, has plastered its name all over the entrance to MIPIM. I’m not suggesting Nottingham should do the same, but there is every logic in gently ramping up the city’s marketing budget to support an award which has put us front and centre on an international stage.
Those who don’t come to MIPIM will inevitably focus on the yachts and the money because they make easy pictures and easy headlines. For many cities, that’s just not what MIPIM is about.
Sure, there will be some cities smooching would-be investors at some very expensive tables in Cannes. But not Nottingham. Last night it was largely in a pizza parlour reflecting happily on another day and another good win.