So in terms of Therme Manchester, that's a considerably smaller project, and was actually announced pre pandemic. The planning was submitted in November last year, it's just the planning stage that's been approved this year in March. There's substantial infrastructure in place, and the location is already used as a leisure development so the footfall is already there.
It's also just 28 acres, whereas London Resort is planned to be some 30 times larger that that with no infrastructure in place, and no prepared land. Therme is replacing an existing building where land is already relatively well prepared, Swanscombe's heavy industry land...not so much. It's also costing a mere £250m compared to London Resort, which will almost certainly end up going considerably over budget.
Anyway, back to London Resort itself, and I simply cannot stress this enough. Do not take press releases at face value. Look at the wording in them, beneath the exciting headlines and phrases and you'll find they don't actually amount to a whole lot. Let's take a look at the most recent press release as an example:
3rd June 2020
Today, The London Resort announced it has taken four significant
steps in its
preparation to submit proposals later this year. Despite the massive disruption caused by COVID-19, The Resort’s expert team has maintained strong progress on its work and confirmed:
- Proposals for a ‘late-summer / early autumn’ public consultation including online and ‘virtual’ engagement
- Confirmed submission of a 300-page Environmental Scoping report by 12th June
- Contacted advisors of affected local businesses, setting out terms for the acquisition of land including an additional premium
- Written to the Community Liaison Group to help share information about the project
Look carefully at the words in red, there's no real substance to it:
- They're proposing to submit a public consultation, they still haven't done so.
- They're setting out terms for buying land, they haven't bought it. I could send a letter to Bob the mechanic and tell him my terms for buying his garage is a tenner and a mars bar. I've set out my terms, but it doesn't mean that he'll agree to them. If he does agree, I don't even have that tenner and a mars bar to give him anyway
- How do you help share information? Does that mean you've just let them know there's an e-mail address if they have questions? If it's a typo and they've actually sent them information, what information was shared?
Realistically, there is nothing that hasn't been repeated again and again over the past 8 years in that statement. It's the exact same stuff, intended to build excitement and get the press posting to attract attention but there's no new information and little has changed.
They’ve invested nearly £70m so far, and the thing that’s holding them back is apparently purchasing the land (they’ve gradually secured 80-85% of it so far).
Again this is where wording comes in. As far as I'm aware, the largest chunk of land is LaFarge's former cement works at about 388 acres. London Resort have only placed a downpayment of about £3m on the land at present which is held in escrow, not actually handed over to LaFarge until they actually buy it. That deal was agreed in 2015, and has actually had to be extended multiple times, but the land is only secured for them, not purchased.
As the holding companies for this park are still hiding behind small company account exemptions (amazing for a multi billion pound project!) it's difficult to get an idea of just how much land they've
actually purchased. I'd assume the vast majority of it is just an agreement to purchase which landowners such as LaFarge are happy to sit on and extend for the moment. There's little demand for contaminated heavy industry land anyway so they may as well hold on in the hope that something will happen as there's not much else it'll be used for.
Away from the large chunks of land though, on the resort's Facebook page you'll see annoyance from exasperated local businesses located at the nearby Manor Way Business Park who were told they would be bought out, yet are being met with radio silence from the company. If they're unable to deal with small land/property owners, what hope do they have of actually completing the larger land deals?
they’re also getting £25m in additional funding from Keltbray, the firm who did the infrastructure for the London 2012 Olympics; where is this idea that they have no money coming from, out of interest?
That £25m is 0.71% of a £3.5bn budget, it's miniscule. However, as I've mentioned, the £25m funding was an
intention to invest via a joint venture company called LR Keltbray JV (Holdings) Ltd. This company was dissolved last year with no money handed over. Keltbray no longer even mention the deal on their site, the only references to it are in trade publications and news articles. This begs the question, if they can't hold on to £25m of financing, what hope do they have of securing £3.5bn+.
There's been zero news of any sort of prospect of decent financing coming in. The last accounts for KEH Entertainments which only go up to 2018 stated they're being financed by their parent company KEHC, but only on a 12 month rolling basis. There is nothing saying they're going to be bankrolling this whole project whatsoever.
Why is it that the UK seems to have so few of these projects materialise compared to other countries? The thing that makes me confident about this one, though, is that it’s been around for some time now. Most of these projects that aren’t successful tend to vanish after a year or so, but this one has been very persistent.
This is the thing, the project hasn't really materialised. There's been very little in terms of actual substance. Save for a few public consultations and a couple of artist's impressions there been no actual major investment from anyone and no actual ground breaking at the site.
The
only thing we're seeing is a merry-go-round of the same press releases and agreements with companies who promise to come on board yet silently disappear a year or two down the line. Remember IHG signing a deal? What happened to that for Radisson to come along and announce another deal? I still maintain the company is severely struggling to attract
any sort of investment, and this current climate has made it substantially worse. What was already an immensely unlikely project is now looking pretty much impossible to achieve.
The press releases only serve one purpose, to drum up media attention in the project so that it can be used as a tool to attempt (yet again) to get some investors through the door. Considering how many times that trick has been pulled now, it's looking less and less likely that those investors will be forthcoming.
It's also telling that the press releases on their official site only go back to last year and various other bits of content have disappeared too. The simple reason for that is about 95% of what was released in the previous 6 years are promises and targets that weren't kept, and agreements with companies which have now decided they're better off spending their time and effort elsewhere.
My point is; PY Gerbeau has not been on the team for long and seems to have quite drastically overhauled the project. Maybe we should give him and his team a chance?
Whilst I have respect for PY being brought on board, what has actually been drastically overhauled since he came on board? All I see is a new website, a few announcements but again - nothing whatsoever of any real substance.
