£18m Worcester technology park set to bid for tenants

10:40am Saturday 9th March 2013 in News By Tom Edwards

HIGH-TECH: An artist’s impression of how the £18 million technology park will finally look once it is completed. HIGH-TECH: An artist’s impression of how the £18 million technology park will finally look once it is completed.

AMBITIOUS plans for a new £18 million technology park in Worcester are going full steam ahead – with council chiefs actively marketing the site to potential companies.

Despite suffering a major blow last September when Worcester Bosch pulled out as the main tenant, Worcestershire County Council is ploughing ahead with the landmark scheme.

Your Worcester News can also reveal there is interest from at least one mystery international company about using the site to open up a UK base.

A brief has now been produced detailing the expected timetable for the park, which will sit on 50 hectares of land near Junction 6 of the M5.

It states: l A raft of small companies will be able to take up mixed units of 10,000-25,000sq ft around the southern edges of the site.l Larger occupiers will be able to ‘buy’ land on the northern part of the site to design and develop whatever fits their needs.

l An ‘enterprise zone’ will sit on the central part of the site, offering accommodation for blue-chip companies.

l Tree planting will take place across the site to give the project a sustainable, green feel.

A timetable has also been published saying highways work is set to start in June, before detailed planning applications are submitted in September for initial buildings.

A raft of units would then be ready by the summer of next year.

The land originally set to be occupied by Worcester Bosch, which sits on the northern section and could be home to 1,000 jobs, could be split up for multiple use, if need be.

Council chiefs say large manufacturing, research and development or logistics companies could fill the northern section up.

They also say all sizes of companies are welcome to talk to the authority over becoming a potential tenant for the site.

Councillor Adrian Hardman, leader of the county council, said: “There is a lot of interest from companies about becoming part of the technology park, including international interest.

“We’ve moved on from the Worcester Bosch idea, which would have meant the company having one enormous unit.

“We’ve got lots of flexibility with the site – we can still accommodate big companies but we are not relying on one big player.

“I expect a wide range of high-tech companies to be a part of it.”

The development comes with 1,600 parking spaces and when full will contain 3,000 workers.

Comments(6)

longpete says...
11:27am Sat 9 Mar 13

Good to see that public investment in the future is still allowed to exist in coalition Britain. however, I hope they're going to change the sizes to square metres if they want to attract international companies. Who outside the UK and US knows how big a square foot is? (Fotunately it's quite easy as 10sq.ft. roughly equals 1 sq.m)

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Letterman says...
11:46am Sat 9 Mar 13

Lets hope this isn't a half hearted job in the usual council style, and that this technology park is one to have the wow factor and put Worcester on the map. In terms of transport links, it would be prudent to link this park to one of the 2 roundabouts either side of Trotshill Way by a new bridge over the M5, thereby easy the pressure at J6 and Pershore Lane.

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knick-knack says...
7:06pm Sat 9 Mar 13

It would be typical of this council to create a new technology park to accommodate 3,000 workers and yet do nothing about an already over-strained M5 access and crossovers.

As Letterman has stated, another bridge to allow a flow across onto our half-finished ring-road will help, but another Motorway junction would make even more sense. However, without a completed ring-road it would only add to the jams in the city boundaries.

The conservatives have failed Worcester, with their lack of any vision and its citizens are starting to reach a boiling-point over the inadequate traffic policies of this sad administration.

The time will come when elections will be won on traffic policy, or lack of it!¬

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RobertR says...
7:37pm Sat 9 Mar 13

The Technology Park means prosperity for Worcester. But the Sixways junction needs improvement. The traffic lights just make it worse. The whole idea of a roundabout is to ease the flow of traffic.
It's lost on our Highways dept with their traffic lights and innummerable road signs.

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saucerer says...
10:07pm Sat 9 Mar 13

This could be a well-conceived idea that will be totally undermined by the highways department if other projects in Worcester are anything to go by. It's as if they want to stop all vehicles from travelling in and around Worcester with ease.

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Landy44 says...
10:17pm Mon 11 Mar 13

Thisis the kind of thing that needs to be done to stimulate the almost dead local economy, but th council need to ensure the payback is very short term for the taxpayer whilst making it attractive for tenants - I'd love to see now they ar going to do that!

So far I'm finding the conservatives only fractionally better than the previous incompetent labour lot who bankrupted us. Serious action needs to be taken to cut costs and boost the local economy - is this a step in the right direction? The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

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