Erikka Askeland: Herd of white elephants seen on M8

The Maxim development in North Lanarkshire has proved to be a white elephant, with potential costs for many of the celebrities who bought into the tax wheeze used to sell the scheme to investors, including Natasha Kaplinsky

The term "white elephant" describes a valuable possession that its owner cannot dispose of and whose cost of upkeep is out of proportion to its usefulness.

Maxim, the 330 million office park alongside the M8, has often had the term applied to it. In fact, the development of ten vast empty office buildings built under a government-backed tax wheeze on the verge of the biggest property recession in recent history could be described as a herd of them.

The effect of the recession meant the value of the property plummeted below the substantial 198m bank loan that funded it, perhaps even as early as a year after the scheme was complete. The loan, made in the sunny uplands of Peter Cummings' HBOS days, has come under heavy weather since Lloyds Banking Group inherited it. Buckling under the weight of the elephant hanging around the neck of its capital ratios, the bank put the park - and it's massive debt - up for auction.

The buyer of the, admittedly deeply discounted, debt is Cerberus Capital, an aggressive venture capital firm from New York led by George Bush's former treasury secretary John Snow. The sale sparked a competition with at least one other US investor, which is an indication that the Americans will come a long way to chase a cheap deal when they sniff it. Or they haven't spent a lot of time staring at the hundreds of thousands of square feet of empty office space that currently plagues North Lanarkshire - most of this thanks to Maxim.

The firm that built the offending office park in the first place was Tritax, a slick Bond Street-based property investor that specialises in building out former enterprise zones.

These in their turn were introduced under a scheme devised in the US but imported to the UK by Michael, now Lord, Heseltine in 1981. The tax breaks were meant to attract private investors to splash their cash in areas that needed the investment most. The London Docklands were perhaps the scheme's most successful creation.

The only trouble is North Lanarkshire is not London. The Scottish property industry was aghast back in 2005 when Tritax pulled out its plans to build the ten, hulking office buildings all in one go. But it had to, as the deadline for the enterprise zone was due to run out. Heedless of the cries of the local players in the industry, which said all along the scheme would radically distort the market, it went ahead.

Worse, the project was completed just in time for the property crash, when not only did values fall through the floor but the slow trickle of potential occupiers driving along the M8 virtually dried up.

But not altogether.Maxim's main gambit was to wave vast incentives - years rent free and generous fit out budgets - to land a big one. At the end of last year this lured a beast of a tenant, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. But the developers then hit an roadblock with Lloyds, who were suddenly reluctant to let any of the money held on deposit - then an estimated 120m - go to do the necessary renovations to get SEPA. But now, Cerberus will take on the cost of lending tenants - although the deal it will make with Tritax and its host of celebrity and high net worth investors behind the tax shelter is yet to be made clear.

This could yet prove a sticky point for the current coalition government. Over in Davos this week, Prime Minister David Cameron was hinting about some of the goodies he will be putting into its "Budget for growth" in March. Stung by CBI boss Richard Lambert's criticism that the government was doing nothing to support businesses, the government is planning to pour some new wine into the dusty old bottles of the enterprise zone.

But new enterprise zones will only work if private investors back them with their cash.

In North Lanarkshire many of these investors, including John Humphrys and Natasha Kaplinsky, came within a hair's breadth of disaster. As a consequence of the bank foreclosing on the deal they would have lost their money, coughing up tens of millions in lost tax incentives.

Lloyds, which we don't need reminding is part-owned by the government, resisted the temptation to bring about this calamity. But the ten empty office towers of Maxim may yet cast a long shadow over future tax-break funded elephants.