Website tempts visitors to town

EXCITING new developments on the Ipswich waterfront are already tempting foreign investors into town.A website outlining preliminary details of a new housing and restaurant complex on Orwell Quay has attracted enquiries from as far afield as New York and Dubai.

EXCITING new developments on the Ipswich waterfront are already tempting foreign investors into town.

A website outlining preliminary details of a new housing and restaurant complex on Orwell Quay has attracted enquiries from as far afield as New York and Dubai.

The Bidwells site shows an artist's impression of the development and its centrepiece - a tented restaurant - due to open, initially as a marketing suite, by next spring.

It is two years since the launch of the Bellway Homes development on Neptune Quay, when half the flats were sold on the first day.

The Persimmon Homes Essex site on Orwell Quay and two further developments on Quay West and Coprolite Street should provide around 500 new homes and waterfront apartments.

Griffin Wharf, between Bath Street and Hawes Street, is also set for a face-lift and the East of England Development Agency's is to revamp the old Cranfield Mill site to include offices, an hotel, apartments, a new arts cinema and dance studio.

Visitors to Ipswich in five years time will not recognise the town, said Guy Jenkinson, a partner at Bidwells estate agents.

Mr Jenkinson said: "I believe the waterfront area will soon become one of the most vibrant and successful sites in the East of England. It is the jewel in Ipswich's crown. It just needs a little polishing."

Simon Meecham, economic development manager for Ipswich Borough Council, said: "For a long time we have been perceived as a mediocre town at the end of the A14. We are fast becoming the power-house of Suffolk in terms of economic development. Other towns around Ipswich simply cannot keep pace."

Weblink: www.bidwells.co.uk