Prologis Drop Plans!
On the 2nd July 2010 it was to the great delight to PAG and its members that Prologis informed St Helens Council that it wished to withdraw its plans. ProLogis vice president Simon Jenkins blamed the economy for the failure of the scheme, a decade after it was launched. “After several months of reviewing the plans, we are disappointed that we have been unable to redesign the scheme for a strategic rail freight interchange at Parkside that will work in the current market conditions given the need for such substantial investment in rail and road infrastructure,” he said. “Although the plans do not work at this time, as a business we recognise that the site remains an ideal location for a rail freight interchange given its proximity to two major railway lines, the M6 and M62.” Of course the situation which Mr Jenkins describes is something PAG always recognised. The cost of making major motorway changes, the rail infrastructure, the cost of borrowing and the difficult of dealing with thousands of extra vehicles a day on an already stressed road infrastructure would never work. Of course St Helens proposed new planning policy is largely based on the Astral/Prologis planning application which is still to come before public inquiry. Given that Mr Jenkins himself acknowledges that the very same plan is not viable, it will be interesting to see how the Secretary of State views St Helens Green Belt proposals in light of the fact that their primary evidence is based on a failed plan. Link to St Helens Star News Item
Link to Liverpool Daily Post News Item Good News For St Helens?Chris Amery from St Helens Reporter asked PAG 'why you guys think it's such good news for St Helens?' Dave Tyas, PAG Chairman responded ... Thanks for contacting us. Maybe your question should be why do you think the decision is good for our local community rather than good for St Helens? The site of the former colliery may lie within the boundary of the St Helens borough but its location is directly adjacent to Wigan and Warrington too. The Prologis proposal would have impacted the lives of many people in the area. It threatened to bring about an increase of up to 10 million extra vehicles a year to our roads. Only last week I was talking to friend who lives in Newton-le-Willows. His son has just turned 16, and over the course of his sons life he has been critically ill in hospital over 60 times due to asthma. I live in Newton-le-Willows and all my own family have asthma. Newton-le-Willows was declared an air quality management area last year. Of course I’ve not mentioned the other potential pollution aspects too, the 24x7x365 day working, the noise and light and the direct affect on the 3000 residents that border the site. The original plan included a container deport that would have stacked containers 6 high on land that was never part of the colliery and today is open farm land. It always amuses me that those that call us NIMBYs are the ones that are all for it as long as it isn’t in their back yard – so who’s the NIMBY there then? We’ve never been against jobs by the way, but there have been some terrible mistruths told about jobs by some St Helens councillors. We’ve had statements like 10,000 jobs for St Helens (the number varies but is always in the many thousands). The total number of jobs would of course have to be divided up across the 3 boroughs and beyond, so St Helens itself would only get a slice of the cake. Certain St Helens senior councillors and MPs have used the total job estimate to win votes at elections recently and in the past. The tactic preys on hope the conscience of the people of St Helens. The site could never have brought thousands of jobs to the people of St Helens. We have evidence produced by the Council’s own consultants that proves that. ‘Prologis Park’ so called exists in several other forms around the country, not just for the proposal for Parkside. Prologis are a huge American warehouse developer who used the rail to road argument at Parkside to justify their interest in developing huge amounts of industrial warehousing that would be primarily served by road haulage. Without doubt their master plan was to win warehouse space from other companies in the area, and this in turn would have seen warehouse closures in St Helens and beyond. Jobs would have been forced to relocate to Parkside, another well kept secret of the new jobs propaganda frequently touted. In the end the thing that made the proposal unviable was the upfront infrastructure costs. For example in resolving the motorway issues over 4 years, the plans progressed through relocating a motorway junction, increasing capacity on slip roads, building hard shoulder running, and finally a double motorway roundabout solution. Together with the cost for the mandatory but in effect useless rail infrastructure (because after all it always was a road terminal and nothing much to do with rail) that all added up to a massive bill at a time where credit is today somewhat expensive. The only way to make the commercial model work was to build big and grab a lot of green land well beyond the boundaries of the former colliery, and Prologis had to acquire and sell all the rents quickly too. Some of the warehouses proposed were originally bigger than anything else that had ever been built in Europe. In the end the numbers just wouldn’t add up. So why is this a good decision for St Helens? Well because the lives of the people in and around Parkside would have been severely and irreparably damaged by it. Some of these very same people actually live in St Helens would you believe, not that some St Helens councillors and MPs actually appear to acknowledge. What I would like to do though is say a big thank you to our local councillors, from all parties, in all three boroughs, and also our St Helens MEP, who have always stood by our community and supported us from the beginning. Of course we have had fantastic support from our community too and we will continue to need its help as we fight on to keep the Parkside area in Green Belt. It will be interesting to see how well St Helens future planning policy now stands up to public inquiry given that the Local Development Framework is so blatantly structured around the actual Prologis planning application, which of course now no longer exists. Good riddance Parkside Freight Terminal, we’ll be waiting for you should you return. Next PAG Meeting September 8th 2010 (AGM)Our next meeting will be on the 8th September due to the holiday season and will also be our annual AGM (Winwick Leisure Centre 8pm). If you have any items for the agenda or questions you wish to raise please forward to
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. This will help the committee have time to prepare and consider any points. | 
