Plans for homes and businesses at industrial site

14.04.11 – Sandwell Chronicle

Multi million pound plans to transform a vandal plagued industrial estate into as many as 250 homes and businesses will be submitted to council chiefs in the summer.

Developer PxP West Midlands wants to transform the 22-acre Excelsior Trading Estate, on Cakemore Road in Blackheath, into houses and industrial units. The site was once home to Associated Electrical Industries formed in 1928. It was bought by the General Electric Company in 1967.

In recent years the site has become a magnet for vandals.

In 2009 two thieves were suffocated by carbon dioxide in a bungled metal raid at the former Fontana nuts and bolts factory on the estate, when they triggered a fire alarm system in an electricity sub-station. Travellers moved onto the estate in caravans later the same year.

PxP West Midlands Managing director Mark Stapleton says he will apply for planning permission for the development to give the site a new lease of life.

"We bought the Excelsior Trading Estate site in 2009. We've now cleared the site and we want to turn it into a mixed use development," he said.

"We're planning an application for later this summer. The site has been a hotbed of industrial activity but it has been in decline for several years.

"We're going to try and put between 200 and 250 homes on the site and industrial units, between 3-5,000 sq ft in size as well.

"We own the whole site already and we have cleared the site to get ready for development."

Blackheath Councillor Mary Docker welcomed the scheme.

She said "Any kind of development will bring people into Blackheath and help the area."

PxP West Midlands is a joint venture partnership between regional development agency Advantage West midlands, which soon will no longer exist due to cutbacks, and investor and developer Langtree.

AWM's stakes in regeneration projects around the West Midlands are expected to be handed to a national body when the £300 million-a-year quango winds down.