Moving the goalposts – Esplanade plans edited to block appeal

Thursday 07 January 2016

Plans for the second office block on the Esplanade have been changed to try to block a potential appeal by rival developers.

The States-owned development company running the Jersey International Finance Centre have applied for permission to amend their plans so that a rival developer with a site just yards away cannot use the third-party planning appeal system to try to block or delay the scheme.

The change would not affect the plans for the building itself – confusingly, the proposed office block would be “Building 5” in the development – but would reduce the border of the scheme so that it was more than 50 yards from property owned by Les Masuriers.

The States of Jersey Development Company is pressing ahead with the construction of the first of a planned six office blocks for phase one of the development.

They say that in total, there are 24 potential tenants who have spoken to them about taking on offices within the development, and four have gone on to the contractual stage of signing initial agreements.

On the image shown below, the area in red is being pulled back to take it further away from the neighbouring buildings, blocking the opportunity for rival developers to invoke the third party planning appeal process.