Keira Knightley, who spawned a local tourism boom there in 2005 while filming Pride and Prejudice, returns to the region to depict Lady Georgiana Spencer in the film The Duchess . Many of the scenes were filmed at Chatsworth House, where Georgiana lived following her marriage to the fifth Duke of Devonshire, with Kedleston Hall, five miles from the city of Derby, standing in for the Spencer family home of Althorp.
But Derby is causing ripples beyond the film-location business. Its ongoing £2bn ($3.7bn) transformation highlights the potential of this lesser-known city as a place for relocation. With strong employment growth, a vibrant high-technology sector and blue-chip endorsement from the likes of internet bank Egg, engineering and aerospace companies Bombardier and Rolls-Royce and carmaker Toyota, Derby is attracting an influx of well-qualified professionals seeking a higher quality of life.
The Derby Cityscape Masterplan is designed to transform the city centre by 2020 but the first fruits of regeneration are already on display. The £340m Westfield Derby shopping centre opened last October, incorporating the UK’s first Cinema de Lux, with its Director’s Lounge for airline business-class-style service. The Cathedral Quarter Hotel, the city’s first boutique hotel, opened in May in a £3.8m refurbishment of former council offices, the old safe vaults being transformed into a well-stocked wine cellar. And Quad, a new arts centre, is due to open its doors on September 26 in time for the annual Derby Feste weekend (September 26 to 28), while Cathedral Green Bridge, a new crossing of the Derwent, will be unveiled around the same time.
When completed, the 12 projects in the regeneration masterplan will add 5,000 new homes to the city centre, mixing townhouses with apartments, plus 1.5m sq ft of office space and a host of leisure and cultural developments.
“Derby has been described as a south-eastern city in the Midlands but its centre didn’t reflect the strength of the local economy,” says John Cadwallader, chief executive of urban regeneration company Derby Cityscape. “When I first walked around I felt it lacked impetus. It was very understated and lacked the right retail offering. By 2020 it will be a complete place to live, appealing to a broad range of people – young professionals, downsizers and retirees.”
Behind the imposing cathedral, the Cathedral Green area marks the start of the Unesco-listed Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site, which stretches 15 miles down the river to Matlock Bath. The mills were a crucible for the industrial revolution in the area’s heyday.
The new bridge, designed for pedestrians and cycling, will bring the region into the 21st century, linking the riverside apartments, office space and restaurants of Cathedral Green to the proposed hotel, retail and leisure developments of North Riverside. Over the next two years further works will add 1,000 homes as part of the Friar Gate Goods Yard development, 30,000 sq ft of retail space at Sadler Square and the Roundhouse, a railway-themed visitor attraction, plus the completion of a £20m regeneration of the central train station.
The Quad project, comprising an arthouse cinema and community arts centre on the fringe of the previously unloved Market Square, aims to foster regeneration via culture. “It’s a real statement of intent, a symbol of the changing face of Derby,” says the project’s director, Keith Jeffrey, a former deputy director of art gallery Baltic, which helped to bring urban regeneration to areas of Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead in north-east England.
Patrick Welsh, development director of the Creative Industries Network (CIN), relocated his family from London to Derby in 2006, exchanging a two-bedroom flat in North Kensington for a five-bedroom family house in the Darley Abbey area, close to Derby’s university district, for £300,000. “People don’t know Derby like Nottingham and Leicester and it’s still got a way to go but I find the quality of life is superb,” he says. “We park on the street, have a decent-sized garden, a good school round the corner for our two children and the countryside is just a few miles away. We’ve even formed a little neighbourhood group”.
“But it’s not a provincial life,” he adds. “I find a lot of people have come from London and brought their skills with them. People have traditionally moved to Derby for the high-tech industries but there is an increasing number of outlets for the creative arts – and the opening of Quad will help to foster the city’s cultural life.”
“Derby has finally stopped playing second fiddle to Nottingham,” says Chris Brown of Boxall Brown and Jones, president of the National Association of Estate Agents, who has worked in Derby for 40 years. “Ten years from now, I doubt I will even recognise the place. I sense a move towards more development in Derby, with apartments and two- and three-bedroom houses fostering more of a community feel. And the planners are on board.”
Brown believes affordability is a key selling point, with prices starting below the national average. A typical three-bedroom semi-detached home in a reasonable location costs about £170,000 while a three-bedroom semi-detached property on a housing estate fetches about £200,000. A substantial, four-bedroom detached house with a garden and a double garage costs about £400,000.
Transport connections are good too, with easy road access to East Midlands Airport and strong rail links, while families are attracted by the good reputation of local schools, notably the Ecclesbourne School at Duffield and Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in Ashbourne.
“The north and west of Derby, market towns like Ashbourne and Belper, are known as the Golden Triangle,” adds Brown. “[The area] boasts more green space, good access to the train station and the M1 [highway], with a weekend escape to the Peak District national park right on your doorstep. Prices start from £200,000 for a semi-detached residence. The market is down but I still have several homes on the market at over £1m. I think Derby is better placed than most to withstand the current economic climate.”
Derby Cityscape’s Cadwallader certainly hopes so. By 2020 Derby will be, in a word, “busier”, he says. “Quite simply,” Cadwallader smiles, “that’s our goal.”
By David Atkinson Financial Times
Published: August 28 2008 03:55 | Last updated: August 28 2008 03:55
