Over a 40-year career in South Wales, Michael Lawley has seen a lot of change. The winner of Property Personality of the Year at the Wales Property Awards 2024 talks about how Cardiff Bay and the wider region have developed. "Wales has always had to punch above its weight," he tells Insider editor Douglas Friedli. You can read an interview with Lawley in the August/September 2024 edition of Wales Business Insider magazine.
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00:00Hi Mike, Property Personality of the Year 2024. Congratulations again. So Mike, you've
00:17seen Cardiff and South Wales more generally change a huge amount over the last 30 or so
00:25years. So what would be the highlights of the way things have changed in that period of time?
00:31Well I think really the transformation in property terms. It's a long period of time
00:35unfortunately for Peter to work through, but it being real change from the dark days of the 80s
00:43when we had recession, factory closures, coal closures. The 90s then was a period of real
00:49regeneration and money, serious money going into things like Cardiff Bay, WDA programs which were
00:57creating growth in the valleys. And that's sort of continued on through. Different times now with
01:03devolution and how things work in terms of delivery of this change. But it is ongoing and it's a
01:11different world to certainly when I started working here, which was a few years ago now.
01:16Just to remind us, when did you start at Cook & Arkwright?
01:20I started at Cook & Arkwright in the early 80s as a novice and as I say worked my way through.
01:26So it's been a long period, but a really, really interesting time to be in Wales.
01:32Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you mentioned Cardiff Bay and behind you is a rather large image of Cardiff.
01:38So can you just briefly say what that area was like maybe 35 years ago?
01:46Yeah, well when I first got involved in Cardiff Bay, literally at the outset we acquired the first
01:53offices Cardiff Bay Development Corporation after they were designated. I'd started my working life
01:58in a new town so I kind of knew somehow how these things work with an urban development corporation.
02:04So it was a really active time for us on a lot of fronts from doing a lot of the contribution to
02:11development planning, managing properties, acquiring an awful lot of property and then
02:16disposing and seeing it through. So for us as a business and for many other businesses in Cardiff
02:21it was a really interesting time. But this place was totally different. When I first went there
02:27it was dereliction, couldn't hardly get to the waterfront. The buildings which were there were
02:32very few and in a very poor state and it's been transformational. I mean this is it now,
02:39this is pre-date Cardiff Bay but all of this stuff here all the way down the waterfront
02:44and on through here and beyond here is all what's happened in that period from 1987 through to 2001.
02:53So in terms of an impact it was a massive impact I think not only on Cardiff but it changed the
02:58image of South Wales and Wales that people, investors started looking at South Wales and
03:04realising that oh Cardiff Bay's happening that's a big thing as in the WDA programmes and the M4
03:10being extended. All that stuff really did change people's perception of South Wales from being
03:16coal and steel largely to where it is now which is a much more modern diverse economy. So
03:23this is a great time in my life. Yeah and so where's it all heading next then? What's next
03:30for Cardiff and South Wales would you say? I think we're in a challenging time but then the UK isn't
03:35a challenging time, we've just been through a quite complex political time. I think Wales has
03:41always had to punch above its weight because you know our demographics are challenging at times,
03:48the geography is great in some ways but challenged in other ways for economic activity.
03:53So I think we've got to you know really pull public private resources together as best we
04:00can and I think we can do we can do really well. We've got great material here but you know it is
04:07a challenging position and we've always had to run punch above our weight within the UK
04:13because we're very blessed with the end of an electrified line into London and a motorway into
04:18London. So we've got to kind of use that but equally deal with the challenges now of IT and
04:23technological change. You don't need to take the train to London so often. So I think there's a
04:29lot of people I know live and work out here who actually would have worked in London before but
04:35times have changed so they can have a good lifestyle out here. So I think there's a lot
04:39we can go for but we've got to we've got to keep our act together.