POSTCARD FROM FRANCE…….
From 12-14 March, I and 26,000 others attended the world’s largest property show – MIPIM in Cannes.
It was my first visit to this event, supporting a delegation from Derby, together with a number of public and private sector delegates from across the East Midlands.
Since returning to Derby, my inbox and the Derby Evening Telegraph’s letters page have been liberally sprinkled with observations hinting at……’Cannes, that must have been hard work!’…..’Why bother going?’, “Why was the public purse in part funding a jollie (sic)”.
Everyone is entitled to their own view, but let me use this column to set the record straight.
Hard work? Very, very hard work. To attract the maximum benefit from MIPIM you need stamina and endurance, and the ability to shake hands and retain that ‘perma-smile’ all day, every day.
18-20 hour days were the norm. Remember that many private sector delegates from Derby have spent several thousand pounds each in sorting accommodation and gaining entry to the main event. Unfortunately, prices for travel, accommodation, and hospitality across the board were massively inflated and that investment put an understandable pressure on the individuals involved to become totally immersed in what was going on.
Why bother? Well, for several years I had sidestepped going to MIPIM, believing that an international showcasing event seem very far removed from my own commercial property world in Derby. Two factors, however, strongly influenced my thinking this year, thus making my mind up about going to Cannes. Firstly, the Marketing Derby ‘juggernaught’ is now quite rightly gaining national recognition. At its core is an unswerving desire to raise the external perception of Derby, to make its offer distinctive and to make sure that it fully punches its weight as a location for doing business and attracting investment.
Secondly, and apologies because I have raised it before in this column, this next phase of City Centre regeneration is so, so critical. The successful delivery, completion and occupation of the proposed new office developments for Derby city centre will make or break Derby Cityscape’s emerging Masterplan – it’s as simple as that. With so many local businesses having already relocated in recent years, these proposed developments will not be filled by Derby-driven demand alone; instead we need to attract inward investment.
Understandably, many of the decisions which control the choice of location for footloose investors is made by decision makers located in the core cities, but specifically within London and the South East - and increasingly in Europe.
An opportunity to work in a team and showcase Derby’s best attributes to those individuals was too good an opportunity to miss. Derby City Council’s role in supporting a team in Cannes has, in my opinion, been very harshly criticised. I do not always see eye to eye with Derby City Council but could not help but be impressed by the genuine hardwork put in by certain individuals (they know who they are!) and believe me, when you are competing alongside hundreds of other cities and regions, it does give you as a delegate a massive reassurance when you are able to introduce the leader of the City Council to a potential investor who has been previously fobbed off by lower ranking Civil Servants from other city locations. Put simply, you had to be there to see it and experience it.
Finally, and I know any readers in Nottingham or Leicester will not like this, but the Derby team and the Derby sponsored event were the undoubted highlights for me of the whole East Midlands Delegation. We really seemed to want it a little bit more – that’s the lesson for next year and I would strongly urge all bondholders and would-be bond holders to get behind Derby’s 2009 MIPIM initiative and support it where you can.
The alternative is to do what dozens and dozens of Baltic States did and that was spend millions and millions of Euros having the largest hoardings, the most lavish presentations and ultimately populated by vacuous, albeit visibly pleasing young blonde ladies resident to those Baltic States. Now there’s a thought!
