BRISTOL ARENA DELAYED BUT THE SIZE OF VENUE TO BE INCREASED

The much-anticipated opening of Bistol’s new arena has been delayed until 2025, the developers behind the project have confirmed. The YTL Arena, being created from the conversion of the huge Brabazon Hangar at the old Filton Airfield, won’t now open for its first gig until late 2025 or early 2026. However, the venue will be even bigger - YTL Developments has said.

The capacity of the arena is to be increased from 17,000 to 19,000 by improving the design, the Malaysian firm added. The YTL Arena was originally pencilled in for a 2024 opening but that has since slipped and, for the past year or so, there had been no confirmed date for opening.

The company has blamed “delays resulting from the impact of Covid” and the general challenges in the construction market for the postponement.

It’s been a while since Bristol tried to bring the Eurovision Song Contest to the city, but there hasn’t been much progress on the YTL Arena. YTL said they are yet to start actual work to convert the hangar into the arena, but said they have been “making good progress” on the arena’s development and are “talking with major contractors”. YTL Arena chief executive Andrew Billingham said preparation work has been done.

“We have been making good progress on the development of YTL Arena Bristol and are now entering the final stages of design and talking with major contractors,” he said. “Work has begun on key pieces of infrastructure required including new road connections, establishing new power supplies and site preparation works.

“The train station at Brabazon is an important element and discussions continue on how this might be brought forward,” he added. The logistics of the train station at the Filton Airfield development site have been controversial, with a debate about who will pay for it and how many trains will end up running every evening to transport people attending events at the arena.

Mr Billingham said “Despite the delays to the opening date, YTL was “totally committed” to opening the arena.

Because of Covid and some other construction market issues, we’re now looking at a late 2025 or early 2026 opening date,” he said. “But YTL is still 100% committed to building Bristol’s first major indoor music arena and entertainment complex. We’ve made some design improvements that will allow us to increase the maximum capacity of the arena from 17,000 to 19,000, with over 2,000 premium seats.”

The arena will include exhibition and convention halls; banqueting capacity for 4,000 people; and a flexible hub for entertainment, film, TV and music rehearsals. YTL Developments also received approval from South Gloucestershire Council to create a 15-acre sustainable public park at the centre of Brabazon last year.

YTL has been working with Bristol-based interior designers Studio B on the arena plans. Studio B is a Clifton-based design agency which won the job to design the arena and the spaces around it. Its founder Kyle Clarke said winning the contract was the “highlight” of the year.

“Since we received the instruction, we’ve been completely consumed with designing selected spaces within the arena to completely blow the customer experience through the roof,” he said. “There isn’t another arena in the country that will come close. Huge hats off to the YTL Arena team for working with our relatively small, young, ambitious Bristol studio.

“Together, we’ve got exciting plans to bring in other local artists and small businesses, harnessing Bristol’s endless skill and talent to ensure the arena feels proudly part of the city,”

In property circles we are all familiar with the phrase “due diligence” but it is often talked about in terms of “the deal” – the bricks, mortar, facts and figures of the deal. Equally as important but often overlooked, is due diligence on the people you are working with. Here we take a look at “the people puzzle” and why checking out people, as well as property deals, is every bit as important.

We have all seen the posts on social media, you know the ones, the ones which make those of us who have been in business a while cringe. They are asking for money or JV partners, and they usually talk of amazing deals which “just cannot be missed” and are “only available today”. Further, most of us have come across the self-styled “property gurus,” sharks and unscrupulous people, who are out to con the unsuspecting of their hard-earned cash.

What is interesting though, is that when we hear the stories, we always think “this would never happen to me…

I would never fall for this” and yet people do and, it’s often not just the newbie investors who fall for the patter and the stories, it’s the experienced ones too. In this article we are going to look at the practical things we should be doing to check out the people in the deal, whilst also looking at some of the psychological principles too.

• Google the individual and the company (if there is one)

• Check out both company and individual on Companies House

• Request details of their background, experience, and track record

• Ask to speak to past clients or people who have invested or worked with them

• Search for them on social media and online forums

• Talk to people in your network – ask about the individual and the company

• Do all the usual due diligence on the deal itself – does it stack?

• Does their body language match their spoken language – what’s your “sense of them?”

• Do you feel comfortable with them?

• When things go wrong, as they often will, do you get a sense that they will be solution focused and working side by side with you or will they be finger pointing?

• Are they excessively flattering or overly charming?

• When you’ve spent time with them (over coffee etc.) how do they treat others?

• Are you compromised? More on this below.

In addition to the more tangible criteria above, I am a huge advocate of listening to your gut instinct. The message, which comes from somewhere deep inside the sum of your accumulated experiences, knowledge, and journey through life. Unfortunately, as human beings, we can all be compromised and, when we are, we can over-ride our gut instinct. The best examples of this are from things we do all the time – from that piece of cake we eat when we’re supposed to be watching calories, to the item we bought, that we haven’t budgeted for – we’ve all done it and we are past masters at it!

So, how do we prevent being compromised? The answer is in knowing yourself, your triggers and having a plan – someone to sense check with, time to stop and think, a network to bounce ideas off.

SOME OF THE HIGHLY CHARGED EMOTIONS, WHICH MAKE US OVERRIDE OUR GUT INSTINCT ARE:

• Excitement

• Greed

• Desperation

• Fear

Only you will know how you will feel, when you are in the grip of one of these emotions. When you feel that you may be, it’s time to stop, think, evaluate, and maybe sense check with someone outside the “deal” that you know and tr us

· Time – many successful transactions and partnerships are built over time. Are you being coerced into moving too quickly because a deal is “only available today” or does it feel as though someone is trying to short circuit the natural flow and rhythm of the relationship? Ask yourself what’s the urgency? Why do I need to decide now? What will be different tomorrow?

• Influence v manipulation – know the difference between the two. Who benefits?

• Is one party over reliant on the other and is the partnership equitable?

• Ethics – do both parties share the same ethos?

• Do you like them? We touched on this before. Property Investors that we talk to are often surprised when we say that we don’t work with people we don’t like. If you don’t like someone, then your instincts are trying to tell you something, in our experience, you ignore them at your peril – several decades of business has taught us this one!

Last, but not least, if it feels too good to be true, the chances are that it is! Take the time you need to assess, sense check and stop, look and listen. If something still doesn’t feel right, then move on, there is always another deal and lots of super ethical people out there to partner with, that will feel right!