It was 2010. There were some old buildings in Aldridge called the magistrates courts. They’d been boarded up for as long as I could remember and then a for sale sign went up. The sign remained up for ages and eventually, I decided to buy them because I thought they were a bargain.
The Old Courts
Once I owned them I had to decide what to do with them so I held a public meeting in a marquee. This allowed people to have a look around and we could talk to them. As the meeting concluded a man came across and said he worked for Orridge who were a company that occupied the building opposite. The building opposite was old and no longer suitable for his purposes and he wanted to move out. That would mean disruption and he was keen to stay in Aldridge. Would I build an office block for him and he would rent it? This seemed like an eminently sensible solution and I went away and had some drawings produced.
The Design
As time went on some politicians got involved and the scheme evolved to be not only an office block but a small block of flats as well. This would involve a land swap with LCP, a development company, that owned the shopping precinct. They were agreeable to this and so it seemed we had a good way forward. I decided to give the development some kudos and after some thought, I called it Aldridge Prime and designed the marketing collateral.
Marketing Collateral
As time went on the gentleman from Orridge pressed me on progress. I asked of course for a legal document which committed them to rent the premises I was building. He promised to provide this repeatedly and the building work continued. Time progressed and the building was nearly completed. The gentleman from Orridge continued to insist that the document would be produced imminently. Eventually, I had to give him an ultimatum and he failed to meet it. It transpired that he did not have the authority to commit Orridge, or the parent company Christie’s, to such undertaking. I was left with a very nice building in Aldridge costing over £1m which had been designed for a company that didn’t want it.
The Build
All I could do was to go ahead and try and find some tenants to occupy the space that I had created. The problem was that the premises were not suitable for letting and finding tenants in Aldridge was going to be problematic. In the event we found tenants fairly easily for the ground floor and by promising a ridiculous rent I persuaded a company I was involved with to move into the first floor. The result was that I had a building that cost too much to build and wasn’t rented at sufficient return.
The Finished Aldridge Prime
Meanwhile, the land swap deal collapsed and the flats could not then be built. This didn’t seem to be too much of a tragedy because it seemed that the cost of build would have been higher than the cost to sell.
As time went by the tenants of the first floor took more area and I agreed to more bad deals to placate them.
Eventually, as part of a wider deal, the tenants forced me into a position where I had little alternative but to sell them the premises at a deeply discounted price. The deal eventually concluded after a long protracted delay in September 2022 and I no longer had anything to do with the premises I’d called Aldridge Prime. As disasters went it was fairly muted but it was not a financial success. I always expect success and when it happens I accept it as the norm but I resent losing out. The pleasure of success is far outweighed by the pain of failure.