ST . MODWEN | A GENERATION OF REGENERATION | INTRODUCTION
St . Modw
Peter Bill , former editor of Estates Gazette and author of Planet Property
The same month St . Modwen floated on the stock market , in April 1986 , The Money Pit , starring Tom Hanks as a hapless house renovator topped the box office . In cleaning up 10,000 acres of brownfield land over the past 30 years St . Modwen has become the most skilled company in Britain at extracting brass from muck , rather than the reverse , as this 84-page anniversary celebration demonstrates .
Development is a risky business at the best of times . The worst of times have cycled in twice since 1986 . Once in 1990 , then again in 2007 . First time around I was editor of Building magazine . In late 1988 I suggested that “ smoke signals coming from the construction industry are puffing the same story … material shortages , price rises or even the mythical £ 100 a day bricklayer , the message is … the industry is overheating .”
St . Modwen survived . Many didn ’ t have the simple guts to do what Sir Stanley Clarke did . His words from 1990 on p . 46 say much for the man . “ Everyone was running scared , and the banks got after us . They said we ’ ve got to close offices , got to do a rights issue … I was so cross , I stood up to my full height … and I took my fist … and I banged it down on the table ... They could never understand what we were doing , those City boys .”
What ’ s easy to understand is Sir Stanley , his successor from 1989 Anthony Glossop , and then from 2004 Bill Oliver , continued to tackle seriously daunting projects such as Coed Darcy p . 8 and Longbridge p . 20 . The second time round I was editor of Estates Gazette . In April 2006 I worried that “ there is now a darker and scarier feel that ( the commercial property sector ) is now detached from the reasonable view that markets go down as well as up .”
When the next economic hurricane hit in 2007 St . Modwen withstood the storm . Between June 2007 and June 2009 real estate values fell 45 % and land values fell further . Most developers bust their banking covenants . A few big house builders teetered close to bankruptcy . As I say in the profile of Bill Oliver p . 79 “ What is extraordinary to trouble-seekers ( like me ) is how well St . Modwen charted the deepest property recession in modern history .”
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