Areas around Wembley City will be completely transformed over the next 15 years.

Rendering of the new 441-room Hilton Hotel owned by Quintain.

Nick Shattock, Deputy Chief Executive of Quintain.

An arial view of Wembley City, one of London’s main Olympic venues.

The Wembley City scheme will cost US$4.4bn to build over 15 years.

Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London.

Greenwich, Birmingham, Bristol and Middle Haven are all under redevelopment.

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On the way to Wembley Capital city eyes UAE investors

Business model

Cleary, Quintain is no ordinary developer with no ordinary business model. The company not only builds but through its investment and fund management divisions has the capacity to drive and manage money into major mixed-use projects. Plans are already on the cards for a hotel fund.
"Am I thrilled that we have 21 million sq ft of land in the capital city in the fourth most densely populated nation on earth? We have fantastic transport, two Olympic-sized stadiums, a million sq ft in Birmingham, a million sq ft in the North East, a zero-carbon 3 million sq ft scheme in Bristol too. Yes, it makes you think about the future and creating sustainable cities, it has to be one of the great business models of the 21st century," claims Shattock.

Olympic bid

It took Canary Wharf, the capital's media hub, almost 15 years to grow into what it is today. Quintain's mantra of "transforming towns and cities" doesn't really seem to do justice to the grand scale of regeneration it has to do. Nonetheless, local residents in Wembley are said to be looking forward to the end result.

"The consultation we did before Wembley, 6,400 people attended. We got 6,400 replies and only seven of these were negative. Our last 4-6 buildings at Wembley were all granted unanimously. We're very proud to be part of the Wembley community and such is their trust in us that Brent Council - the municipality for Wembley has signed with us to build their town hall at the centre of our scheme," says Shattock.

Wembley and Greenwich planning consent was awarded before London's Olympic bid. However, Quintain directors were alongside Sebastian Coe and Sir Bobby Charleton when London presented its offer to the International Olympic Committee in February, 2005.

"If this coincides with the Olympics, we're nicely positioned. We have no unsold residential stock. We are still achieving good levels of liquidity in development finance. We'll have a tough 2008 for UK house prices, a tough 2009 but with a million people coming to London by 2016, it is such that the steeper the fall, the steeper the bounce back," stresses Shattock.

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