Pure fantasy - and they've known it for months (From Daily Echo)

Pure fantasy - and they've known it for months

3:02pm Wednesday 1st September 2010 in Hampshire Business By Gareth Lewis, Business Editor

A Palmer Johnson boat

THEY’VE GOT SOME NERVE.

They teased us with talk of 800 jobs, millions of investment and a lovely shiny new superyacht factory in the heart of the city.

The true scale of the incentives offered to entice them to set up in Southampton will never be known.

And now, long after it’s become clear their business plan was bunkum, Palmer Johnson has become an anchor weighing the city down.

They were supposed to be up and running in Woolston last year after winning planning permission for a glitzy new boatyard purpose designed to build 100m long superyachts.

One hundred metres long! Wikipedia lists just 20 yachts 100m and above in private hands today and they’re owned by the likes of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Even Paul Allen, the founder of Microsoft, makes do with a mere 92m!

It’s pure fantasy and they’ve known for months there’s next to no chance of them pressing ahead in the forseeable future.

Now, fresh from pulling out of the UK with the loss of 110 jobs, having built just one boat in almost two years at Hythe, they say they’ll have a think about what to do with the Woolston site.

Really? Seems to me they’ve been thinking about it for quite a while and they’ve largely thought ‘no way’.

There’s vague talk of building it if “the need arises”.

Why does this matter? Well, anyone who’s been to Woolston recently will realise that this is a community that could really do with a shot in the arm. They’ve never recovered from the loss of VT and desperately need companies offering good jobs on that site, if it is ever to be regenerated.

The community there doesn’t want to wait for some American executive to stick a finger in the wind and decide he likes it.

They want jobs and investment, life and activity and they want it now. We’ve all been waiting around for far too long.

Fortunately, there are alternatives floating in the wings.

When SEEDA was first touting the site around, marine firms from across the region were queuing up to get a space there to cash in on that unicorn-rare deep water quay.

Many had their noses put right out of joint when SEEDA snubbed the lot and plumped for the Americans and their sexy boats.

Palmer Johnson’s woes could now be a godsend for any number of Hampshire’s army of marine firms keen to expand and it is to these companies that we should now look to rescue the project.

Both SEEDA and the city council admit they are thinking about life after Palmer Johnson, although the Wisconsin superyacht firm remains first choice.

They’re absolutely right to, except they should pitch Palmer Johnson overboard immediately.

They’ve have had their chance.

City bosses should move on and put the site back out to tender for firms with plans rooted in reality.

Superyachts that sail only in the imagination are really not so super.