“I am a property professional who has been working in Cardiff for over 35 years advising on real estate development and asset management. I still advise on property in Cardiff Bay but today most of my time is spent on delivering Plasdŵr, a major 7,000 house urban extension in North West Cardiff. My perspective is very much a property one and this is relevant to Cardiff Bay where property and real estate have been the main agents of change over recent decades.
I first visited the Butetown area in the early 1980s when I came to work in Cardiff. By that time Eastmoors Steelworks had closed and the whole area was dominated by dereliction and unused land. Coal exporting needs large areas of land for railways, marshalling yards and coal staithes to tip the coal into the ships, but does not leave many buildings behind.
A particular job I was given was to value an old industrial property in the area of the former West Bute Dock. In those days photographs were all on film and the building I was inspecting did not merit many photographs, so I took the opportunity to wander around this area of dereliction and use up the rest of the film…
Read Mike's fascinating insider's perspective on the huge urban change that took place in full here.