“Waterfront scheme will go ahead, but we may need to reassess if more tenants say no” – States development company

Tuesday 15 April 2014

Work on the States’ office development on the Waterfront could still start by October, despite the key tenant RBC turning it down in favour of Dandara’s new building next to the Grand Hotel.

The managing director of the States of Jersey Development Company, Lee Henry, said that they were disappointed at the decision announced last week, and has said for the first time that there may come a point at which the whole States development project on the Esplanade has to be reassessed.

But he says that with talks lined up with tenants for the first of the six planned office blocks on the Esplanade car park lined up, he remains confident that the States scheme will go ahead.

Mr Henry said: “We are obviously disappointed at losing RBC as a potential tenant but we are still in the discussion phase with several others, and we hope to be progressing with that shortly, subject to those commitments crystallising.

“It is good news for Jersey that RBC is committed to the Island for the long-term and has chosen to invest in a new office building, but in terms of the Jersey International Finance Centre we still believe that there is a requirement, and as we have said before it will be the tenants which ultimately decide which of those proposals succeed.”

RBC represented some 20% of all of the office space requirements over the next five to seven years. The SOJDC have talks lined up with other prospective tenants this month, and Mr Henry said that he hoped to be able to report progress very soon.

“We still believe that the scheme is required and certainly prospective tenants we are speaking to for building four are very positive about the specification and the design of those buildings and I think that we will see the evidence of that in the near future,’ he said.

“There will be a point – it is certainly not now – if it were the case that the next three or four tenants that were looking for new builds went elsewhere then there clearly would come a point where we say ‘right, we know that we now need to reassess this’.”