As our cover for the launch of B4 back in June 2006 – see www.b4-business.com to read Trevor’s article – The Oxford Castle was barely a year old. A fascinating project which witnessed the transformation of the former castle and prison into a leisure destination comprising eight restaurants, an art gallery, a visitor attraction and Malmaison’s flagship hotel, originally the main prison.

Officially opened by the Queen on May 5th 2006, Oxford Castle has proceeded to amass an incredibly impressive collection of international awards. Trevor explains how the past two and a half years have, in some cases, surpassed his expectations and in others disappointed him.

“In almost three years we have tried all sorts of things here. Some have worked better than others, and that has taught us quite a lot about how to get the public to use the Castle, as well as enjoy it, and that has been Jean-Pierre’s (Estate Manager Jean-Pierre Morilleau) mission over the last three years. The ringing endorsement of the site is that we have not had one change of tenant at all and the hotel has probably traded to thirty percent better capacity that we had even dared to hope, all of which is quite gratifying.

“However, we are still working on increasing the public nature of Oxford Castle and that is crucial to its long term success. If I have any disappointments it is that it was intended as the gateway to a rejuvenated West End of the City, but that project hasn’t really got underway. The Council’s offering of Macclesfield House does present a good possibility of extending what we manage here. We are very keen to be involved in this site because it takes up the remainder of the County Council’s freeholds surrounding the Mound which encompasses the Castle. So it seems to me to fit very well and if we can develop the site so that it is celebrating the Castle it will undoubtedly add to the overall appeal of the site and bring even more visitors here. Exhibitions like “Earth from the Air” have been terribly successful and we are really pleased that it has brought seven or eight thousand children to the site. The O3 Gallery has gone through a number of phases but continues to attract really good audiences and excellent art. Sophie Egleton (the Gallery Manager) plans to expand on this next years as well as doing more to involve local children.

“For the coming year we are looking to make more use of public spaces. We are in discussions with an opera company to bring a popular opera to the Castle next year beginning with a couple of charitable evenings raising funds for the Radcliffe Cancer Centre, which we are really looking forward to doing. We also hope we can continue working with Creation Theatre who bring very good productions to the Castle, but perhaps need to be a little less ambitious than we were last year when the weather was not so kind.

“I had hoped that all of the aspirations for the West End, particularly with the recent traffic announcements of improving transport and the way the public realm is dealt with in the City might have been a start to something exciting happening, instead we have had a lot of talk. What we need now is concentrated action to get a few projects going and I would be very interested to be involved in any of those. The West End holds enormous possibility.”

So are you inviting offers to come to you about how you can maybe partner other organisations in new ventures?

“Yes. We have talked to quite a lot of people, including the City Council and County Council. Talking, they are not in ‘go mode’; they are in ‘consideration mode’. The impetus that was created at Oxford Castle should be encouraged to spread out towards the station and further down by Speedwell House. We have a lot to be positive about for the future of this area – we just need to keep the pressure on to make sure something happens sooner rather than later.

Oxford Castle has deservedly accumulated a number of awards – see separate panel for details – the most recent of which was last week and that is incredibly gratifying for all involved. The award won last week was really quite nice because the ‘Academy of Urbanism’ has a poet, Ian McMillan, who writes a poem about all of the entries that are short listed, and he wrote one about Oxford Castle.

Have you been approached to develop other sites similar to Oxford Castle?

“Yes only recently we were awarded Armagh Castle, which is a mini Oxford Castle in a beautiful city, described by ‘Country Life’ as a ‘Georgian Gem’. Only three or four weeks ago there was an article in ‘Country Life’ about Armagh, a small city with only twenty or something thousand people, but it is beautiful and of course it has had a hard time over the last twenty years. But now seems a good time to start a regeneration process there and the Council is certainly keen to engage with us and to follow principals that we adopted here in order to recreate something of note, which is something very firmly part of their city just as Oxford’s Castle is part of Oxford City.”

“The site is a jail, somewhat older than A Wing here, and that will be a small hotel. There will be restaurants, residential apartments, public space and conferencing facilities. As soon as we won the contract, the council asked us to look at the relatively poor housing adjacent to the site, which of course we were delighted to embrace.”

Do you think new developments will be hard to come by in 2009 in this climate?

“For my industry the times have been very troubled, and we are expecting next year to be testing. I do not think that it will be a particularly easy time at all. Perhaps beyond 2009 we might see a glimmer of recovery, but we have unusual conditions, after so much growth, and we will have to knuckle down.”

Do you see people’s spending habits changing dramatically over the next twelve months?

“The funny thing is that when people are a bit miserable they need to spend a bit of money on the things they enjoy. I am told by the restaurant tenants at Oxford Castle and certainly the hotels, that they have not seen a significant drop in trade. Some of them have been very careful to adjust their menu prices and to make offers for the New Year. ‘Tootsies’ are offering a “two for one” in January, which is a notoriously poor month. They are all reacting and are all good, well managed businesses so at the moment none of them are looking as though there is any problem and I think this mix of uses will sustain. I think the restaurants that charge one hundred pounds a head will have some difficulty!”

How do you think we have ended up in a recession?

“I recently attended a conference put on by ‘Shelter’ on the question of the impact of the financial crisis on affordable housing provision. I was asked to address this small conference about how we can improve the prospects and delivery of affordable housing. The point I made was that nobody quite understands when the end of this recession will come, but my perspective is that it began in America with a housing problem; it came here and very quickly became a banking problem and of course the first thing to be affected was the housing market. It is in my view that the recession we are now in we were led into it by the housing crisis. The first sign of recovery we shall see is when house prices stop going down and start going up!”

What steps do you think could be taken to reverse negative growth?

“My view expressed today is that the government should direct help to the house-building industry and the construction industry to correct two issues; one is liquidity and the other is confidence. The two things are related. Liquidity can only be improved, not by telling the banks they have got to lend money to builders and they have got to lend better mortgages, but to provide a circumstance in which the banks feel safe to do so.

“My considered opinion is that through the property, the homes and the community agency, there is a role to underwrite the value of new housing being built by new developers. That underwriting may not lead to the need to buy the houses when they are built but will put a floor to the market. To be profitable, the builder will have to get better prices or they will be obliged to sell to the underwriter.