Posted on October 13, 2010 by John Cronin
Property developer Argent and Manchester City Council have now officially launched one of the most eco-friendly office buildings in the country.
Located in the Northern Quarter district of Manchester, The Hive (pictured) is a 6 storey office complex offering flexible floor space over a total area of 80,000 sq ft. Described by the developers as being “cutting edge”, it is suggested that the building is one of most energy-efficient, new office developments in the UK.
The developers have incorporated ‘low flow’ fixtures and fittings, self-closing taps and leak detection facilities along with energy-efficient lighting and heating systems. All floors in the building have been designed to be passively ventilated with openable windows for cross ventilation, assisted by louvres on motorised dampers to provide secure night time cooling. The Hive is also designed to help the local ecology with a collection of sedum roof gardens. Floor plates on the fourth floor lead out to large, but private balconies overlooking these gardens. State-of-the-art recycling and environmental waste management facilities have also been incorporated into the development. The building has been graded as BREEAM “Excellent” and has an EPC rating of B.
Oliver Butler, project manager at Argent, said: “We are very pleased to have launched The Hive with such a fantastic opening event. The building is now 40% let, with The Studio and the Arts Council England having already moved in.” Events management company The Studio has agreed to lease 10,000 sq ft and Arts Council England has leased 20,000 sq ft and moved into The Hive in March of this year.
Designed by architects HKR, The Hive is located in Lever Street, Stevenson Square. The multi-million pound, speculative development offers Grade A floor space within a striking building that co-exists with several listed buildings that offer mixed-use space. Traditionally the area was the main textile district and whilst Stevenson Square remains the main centre for the fashion industry office space is typically now leased by companies in the creative, design and media industries. The Manchester City Council Strategic Plan (2008-2012) identified the district as having a crucial role as a destination for new activities, especially in meeting the needs of the media-related sector.
Offices in The Hive are available on a variety of tenures and in a variety of sizes, from 15,000 sq ft floor plates to 750 sq ft suites. A typical open plan layout can accommodate one person per 7 sq metres, whilst more spacious floor plans could accommodate one person per 10 sq metres. The floors and ceilings in the non-communal areas have been left as bare concrete in order for tenants to choose their own finish.
Rental prices are for negotiation and have not been made public.
Colliers CRE and Daniel Harris & Co are the letting agents for The Hive.
Posted in Manchester |
Tagged Public Sector, Speculative Developments |
Leave a comment
Posted on October 12, 2010 by John Cronin
Councillors look set to approve a revamp of 1960’s industrial tower block in Brighton to form a centre for the city’s burgeoning digital media sector.
Brighton and Hove councillors are to meet this Thursday, 14th October 2010, to consider the £9.5m redevelopment of New England House (pictured), an office block that already has 87 tenants and houses some 800 people. The favoured option is renovating and recladding the 11,500 sq metre building coupled with an extension to the office by building over the car park. It is expected that the plans would create additional floor space to accommodate another 500 people.
The council is working in conjunction with both Wired Sussex and the University of Sussex and is keen to promote New England House as a hub for companies working in the digital media sector. Estimates suggest that Brighton and Hove is home to a cluster of around 1,500 media-related companies employing 10,000 people, plus another 5,000 freelancers.
Council leader Mary Mears said: “This building served our industries in the past but needs work done if it’s to serve the industries of the future. Building the economy is one of our priorities and digital media will be crucial to that.”
Wired Sussex MD Phil Jones said “A renovated New England House would stand as both a statement of how far the digital and media sector in the city has come and also testament to its future ambition. This is about creating a world class centre for innovation and collaboration in the creative industries, something which can help underpin Brighton’s future prosperity. It is great to be moving forward with the project.”
As it currently stands New England House is an 8 storey office block with over 120,000 sq ft of lettable space. The building is owned by the city council. It was opened in 1964 and is reported as being the first purpose built, high-rise industrial business centre in the world. Currently 60% of the total floor space it is let as workshops and office units to a mix of businesses, quite a few of which fall within the creative industries and, more particularly, the digital media industries.
Whilst being structurally sound New England House as a whole suffers from exterior dilapidations and much of the services infrastructure is reaching the end of its useful life. Although funding options are yet to be decided, the council and local business groups believe a speculative redevelopment of the building will be successful. A recent study by the Brighton Business forum concluded that:
“New England House offers both scale and the flexible configuration of spaces across large floor plates meaning that it is suited to providing accommodation for larger and growing businesses. At the same time, it can be sub-divided to provide smaller units where, although the accommodation shortage in the city is not so acute, the benefits of clustering will be more pronounced on a business’s prospects.”
Letting agents Cluttons are currently marketing floor space in Unit D, level 8 of New England House at £16,000 pa for 1262 sq ft of floor space, equivalent to £12.68 / sq ft.
Posted in East Sussex |
Tagged Planning, Renovations, Rental Prices, Speculative Developments |
Leave a comment
Posted on October 11, 2010 by John Cronin
London School of Economics (LSE) is set to buy the Land Registry Office building in central London for £37.5m. The Land Registry Office has issued a press release confirming the deal that is now subject to contract.
The grade II listed building (pictured) at 32 Lincoln’s Inn Fields is being sold to LSE who have plans to use the offices for both academic and administrative uses. The 85,000 sq ft Edwardian building will be used as an expansion of LSE’s university campus which already includes properties in the area. Staff currently occupying the head office will be moved out to the Land Registry’s Trafalgar House office in Croydon.
Julian Robinson, a spokesperson for LSE said: “This is a serious landmark building for a serious University – the purchase of the Land Registry will enable the LSE to further its objective of creating a world class estate commensurate with its academic reputation.”
This transaction comes under the programme of staff reduction and office space rationalisation that the Land Registry Office first announced earlier this year. In total 8 office buildings from a portfolio of 17 have been put on the market at a total valuation of £80m. Along with the existing head office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields other properties deemed surplus to requirements include a £10m 56,000 sq ft office block in Tunbridge Wells; a £6m 110,000 sq ft building in Stevenage, Hertfordshire; a 70,000 sq ft building in the centre of Portsmouth valued at £8m; Ty Bryn Glas, a 60,000 sq ft Swansea office valued at £3.5m and Plumer House, a 4.5 acre site in Plymouth with an office valued at £2m.
The Land Registry has very recently applied for planning permission to build 74 homes on the Plumer House site according to a report in the Plymouth Herald. The current office block, built for the Land Registry in the 1970’s is set to be demolished and the then empty land to be sold off for redevelopment. Staff from Plumer House in Crownhill are due to move to another of the Land Registry’s Plymouth offices.
The Land Registry Office has stated that any surplus space in buildings not being sold, will be rented out where possible.
BNP Paribas Real Estate acted for LSE, Lambert Smith Hampton acted for the Land Registry Office. When appointed, Tony Fisher, head of Lambert Smith Hampton’s office division, said: “Investors are looking to capitalise on current market conditions and take advantage of the good-value investment opportunities available, nowhere more so than in the central London office market.”
Posted in London |
Tagged Listed Buildings, Public Sector |
Leave a comment
Posted on October 10, 2010 by Nell Frizzell
“It’s the job interview from hell,” intones our narrator. And so the new series of The Apprentice begins. As the competitors descend on London, dragging their little wheelie suitcases behind them like a particularly aggressive union of navy-suited air stewards, we the audience are treated to a number of Total Wipeout-style to-camera sound bites.
“Everything I touch turns to sold,” quips Stuart Baggs, who seems to have had his childlike face cruelly inflated by a bicycle pump hidden down his PC World uniform. “I’m a maverick,” claims Alex, determined to “stand out” from the crowd. “I’m going to be the last woman standing” proclaims the Bambi-faced Liz Locke, who seems to have mistaken The Apprentice for a drinking competition.
The introduction then rings out with the cry “From a council block in Hackney to the House of Lords…” which means that Alan Sugar has travelled literally eight miles in his entire career. Take that Sir Cliff Richard.
Once this overture of overstatement is complete, we move to the boardroom at midnight. We know this because the narrator states, with earth-shattering imagination, “Midnight. The boardroom.” Competitors stand around what looks like the drabbest airport security lounge in all of Heathrow, giving each other the evil side eye before Sugar’s sotto voce secretary sends them in to get board.
“On paper you all look very good, but then again, so does fish and chips,” quips the rascal Sugar. He needs someone who’s dynamic and stands out, not a Steady Eddie or Cautious Carol. So he’s sending his troupe of Wild Williams and Reckless Ritas down to Smithfield market to get meaty. Specifically, to make sausages, which according to Lord Sugar, “sell in bucketloads”. This must be something of a surprise to any major supermarket, who usually sell them in packets, and is linguistically about as appealing as the idea of ‘a bin load of steaks’.
“Buy the meat. Make the sausages,” foghorns the narrator, who really is quite the poet. If the idea of staying up all night handling lumpy meat and tubs of rusk as strangers bark out meaningless buzz words around you sounds like hell, then welcome to Hades.
For the task, the competitors are split in to two teams; ladies on one side, gents on the other. Just like portaloos. The men are led by Karren Brady – the youngest ever managing director of a public limited company, the women by Nick Hewer, who apparently needs no introduction, so I won’t even try.
So, first stop; the names. The women’s team decide to call themselves Apollo, because ‘failure is no option’, which is news to the teams behind failed Apollo missions one to ten. As the son of Zeus and Leto, Apollo is also known as the god of the plague, but probably the less said about that the better.
Meanwhile the boys are in the pub, giving themselves a big round of applause for deciding between the names Synergy and Fusion, both of which sound remarkably like taurine-based-energy-drinks-cum-mid-90s-dance-acts. They are led by the Mr Potato Head made flesh Dan Harris, who “is all about getting results”. Dan also wins the prize for saying, just twelve minutes in, that he is putting his “balls on the line”. Taste aside, this is a fairly flagrant failure of food hygiene standards, even for sausages.
Once the meat is bought and the rubber gloves are pulled on, the actual sausage making doesn’t go too well. In the boys’ team no-one wants to do the mincing, while Paloma on the girls’ team is frantically trying to deal with ejaculating pork. Never mind, at least they can make up for it in the selling; the girls in a posh market in the City manage to sell to two restaurants, while the boys drag individual packets of sausages door-to-door in West London.
Once the pork du force is over, both teams head back to Alan Sugar HQ, which seems to be, according to the stock footage, simultaneously in both Canary Wharf and the Gherkin. Final figures are read out: the ladies took £321.16 profit, the gents just £305.90, making them the banger bums and liable to the loss of one member (ahem.)
Mr Potato Head Dan Harris takes the fall, for his quite staggering lack of skill and propensity to shout expletives at people in his team. During this fiasco, the girls are sent home for a, irony of ironies, champagne and sausage barbecue in their Georgian townhouse, no doubt to munch on Dan Harris’ so recently de-lined balls.
Conclusion: The Square Mile used to be full of barrow boys who had got lucky. The Apprentice is full of managing sales supervisor directing heads of chairmen who can’t sell sausages to a street market.
Quotes of the episode:
“I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.”
“”My balls are on the line”
“It’s time to get down to business”
“You sell the sizzle, not the sausage.”
“I don’t want to talk in clichés”
Posted in Misc |
Tagged Apprentice Blog |
2 Comments
Posted on October 8, 2010 by John Cronin
Property giant Peel Group has submitted plans for an office redevelopment in a building next to the Pie Factory building in Salford Quays.
Peel Media, a subsidiary of Peel Group Holdings and developer of Media City UK, has submitted plans to convert a 3 storey office block into a range of office suites suitable for small creative companies. The development will be known as The Greenhouse and is adjacent to the Pie Factory office scheme and the new campus for the University of Salford.
The 32,000 sq ft building has up until now been used as the site office for Bovis Lend Lease, housing 2,000 personnel during the construction of phase one of Media City UK. Peel Media aim to develop The Greenhouse into cost-effective, flexible office space for companies predominately working in the media industry.
Stephen Wild, managing director of real estate for Peel Media, said: “The Greenhouse will provide self contained office suites spread over three floors. It is located less than a minute’s walk from the new tram terminus at the heart of Media City UK and complements the media hub we’ve created at The Pie Factory. It is an ideal solution for small companies looking to be part of the Media City UK environment.”
Architects Stephenson Bell designed the plans for the exterior and interior of The Greenhouse and work will commence once planning permission has been approved. The full plans and application forms can be viewed here. Full details of leasing and cost options have yet to be confirmed.
The adjacent Pie Factory building, formerly a ‘Freshbake’ frozen pies production line, opened in 2007 and now acts as a media hub offering film studio and office floor space ranging from 3,000 sq ft to 6,800 sq ft. Current tenants within The Pie Factory offer services such as casting agencies, camera and kit hire, production services, outside broadcasting and software development. BECTU, the Media & Entertainment Union also leased office space within the building earlier this year.
The Pie Factory, which was initially built as temporary office and studio space alongside the acclaimed MediaCityUK development, is to be retained having become hugely popular with local businesses. Floor space is available on short term, flexible and permanent leases.
Posted in Manchester |
Tagged Media City, Planning, Speculative Developments |
Leave a comment
Posted on October 7, 2010 by John Cronin
Local opposition is growing a week after controversial plans for new council offices in Dorchester were approved.
As previously reported, the £60m mixed-use redevelopment plans for the Charles Street scheme in Dorchester that include the relocation of council offices were approved last week by West Dorset District Council’s (WDDC) development control committee. It has now emerged that members of the planning committee voted six to two in favour of the planning application. Since announcing their decision the council has received approximately 300 letters of objection.
The focal point for opposition to the scheme centres upon the WDDC plans to build new council offices at the site costing £10.5m (see artists impression). The council claims that the new offices will save £145,000 a year, a figure that local campaigners say does not justify the expenditure.
Mike West, co-founder of the Dorchester Forum website, told the BBC: “The offices have been there for 40 years and the council has maintained them. The amount of money they are talking of spending is out of proportion with any productivity gains they are talking about.”
This recent comment made on the forum this week indicates the strength of feeling amongst the campaigners: “Last Tuesday was a dark day for Dorchester and the misappropriation of taxpayers’ funds. Perhaps it’s time for those Council Tax payers who are opposed to the scheme sent a clear signal to WDDC that they are simply not prepared to fund their new multimillion-pound office block HQ.”
Councillor Robert Gould, leader of West Dorset council, who voted for the new offices said: “We simply can’t go on like this, spending huge amounts of tax payers money maintaining and running buildings that will never be suitable for offices. ”
One of the two councillors who voted against the plans at the meeting was Karl Wallace, county councillor for Bridport. He is quoted in the Bridport News as saying: “Although there were lots of members of the public there, a lot of their concerns weren’t actually planning issues – it was the financing of it.” Mr Wallace said he had objections to the size and mass of the building and believed it would be out of character with the historic street setting.
Residents opposing the new office scheme have called the plans “madcap” and an “eyesore”. A large group of placard-carrying campaigners protested outside the council building where the meeting was due to be held.
Developers behind the entire £60m Charles Street scheme are Simons Group. The company is aiming to start construction works in early 2011.
Posted in Dorset |
Tagged Planning, Public Sector |
Leave a comment
Posted on October 6, 2010 by John Cronin
Construction company Morgan Sindall has been awarded a £14.8m contract to build new civic offices for a West Yorkshire council.
It has been announced that a deal has been agreed between Morgan Sindall and English Cities Fund (ECF) for a 5 storey office building to be used as new civic offices for Wakefield Metropolitan District Council. ECF is a joint venture partnership which comprises urban regeneration company Muse Developments, Legal & General, and the Homes & Communities Agency.
The new office is to be built in Burton Street, Wakefield and will offer 123,000 sq ft of floor space. The office building is the second phase of the mixed-use, multi-million pound Merchant Gate development that covers an area of some 17 acres in total.
Other recently developed offices in this quarter of Wakefield include 1 & 2 Burgage Square and Emerald House (pictured). Number 1 Burgage Square offers 17,300 sq ft of Grade A floor space over three floors. Number 2 Burgage Square offers 19,600 sq ft of Grade A floor space, also over three floors. Nearby Emerald House has office floor space amounting to 10,000 sq ft on the first and second floors. Commercial agents King Sturge are quoting rental prices of £16.50 / sq ft for the phase 1 offices.
This first phase was opened this September and at the opening event Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of ECF, said: “Whilst many other developments across the UK have been on hold due to the current economic climate, ECF partners have pressed on with the Merchant Gate scheme which now provides contemporary apartments, Grade A office space, restaurants and retail for the people of Wakefield.”
The second phase office scheme includes open-plan floor plates with a central atrium, extensive glazing and external rainscreen cladding with terracotta tiles. Work on the concrete frame of the building is to start this month, following the completion of the piling and groundwork. Planning permission was granted in March, 2010.
Morgan Sindall is aiming to achieve a BREEAM rating of ‘Excellent’ for the scheme by introducing a biomass woodchip boiler, and using local suppliers wherever possible, in addition to control and management of waste on site.
The project is due to be completed in December 2011.
Posted in West Yorkshire |
Tagged Merchant Gate, Public Sector, Rental Prices, Speculative Developments |
Leave a comment
Posted on October 5, 2010 by Rob Powell
Nearly £2m of tax payers money was spent on offices in Northern Ireland that were never used, according to a report by a Northern Ireland Assembly watchdog.
The Assembly’s Public Account Committee investigated the Industrial Development Board (IDB), now replaced by Invest NI, and found that public money was squandered on unused offices.
25-year leases taken out in 1991 and 1992 on offices in Campsie, Londonderry, cost the tax payer £1.8 million but the offices went unoccupied.
Mr David Sterling from the DETI explained in evidence to the committee that at the time the leases were taken out, local unemployment was very high and the offices were an “innovative” attempt to market the area “as a location for back-office business processing-type organisations. ”
Mr Sterling said that he “greatly regretted” that a break clause in the fourth year of the leases was missed.
Committee chairman, Paul Maskey AM, said that an “absence of risk management” had meant that the “Department [of Enterprise, Trade and Investment] was left for 19 years with two white elephants it was unable to let.”
Posted in County Londonderry |
Tagged Public Sector |
Leave a comment
Posted on October 5, 2010 by John Cronin
A property development company is facing stiff opposition for a planned multiple office block scheme in Edinburgh.
Tiger Developments’ plans for a site at Haymarket in Edinburgh are facing strong objections from several heritage groups. Previous plans submitted by the developers for a 17-storey five-star hotel were thrown out in the wake of a public inquiry and now the company is seeking permission for new office accommodation along with a much smaller hotel and retail units.
The land is a gap site in Haymarket on the outskirts of Edinburgh’s world heritage site, next to the Haymarket railway station. The initial scheme, which would have seen an Intercontinental hotel built on Morrison Street along with offices affording floor space of some 335,000 sq ft, was supported by Historic Scotland and approved by councillors after just one hearing, despite widespread concerns about the height of the main building. The scheme was subsequently rejected by the Scottish Government in October, 2009.
Tiger Developments is now proposing four “environmentally-friendly and contemporary office buildings” – as well as a budget hotel on what is described as “one of Edinburgh’s longest existing gap sites”. The tallest of the new office buildings will be 8 storeys high. The Cockburn Association, the main heritage watchdog in Edinburgh said other than the removal of the towering hotel from the previous scheme, there was “little difference” with the new plans. It is claimed that the new office blocks will have a detrimental affect on views to and from the area and will be an eyesore thanks to its “lumpy” design and “ugly” buildings, which will “tower over existing properties”.
Cockburn Association director Marion Williams told The Scotsman: “The overall height of the development is a significant concern. The roofs of the proposed buildings are lumpy and cannot be considered a landmark”.
Campaigners say the new plans fail to link the buildings with other developments in the area, such as the redeveloped railway station building and the nearby Springside development. The latter development includes Springside One, a new 5 storey office block offering over 60,000 sq ft of flexible floor space with an estimated completion date of 2010.
Tiger Developments is part of the O’Flynn Group which is one of the largest privately owned Irish property and construction companies. The company hopes to gain planning permission for the Haymarket scheme by the end of 2010.
Posted in Edinburgh |
Tagged Planning, Speculative Developments |
1 Comment
Posted on October 4, 2010 by John Cronin
Privately owned property investment giant Peel Group has today submitted outline plans for a £5.4 billion scheme in Liverpool.
Four years ago Peel presented its vision for the transformation of 150 acres of derelict dockland in Liverpool into a huge 14m sq ft mixed-use development. The scheme is known as Liverpool Waters and complements the £4.5 billion, 18m sq ft Wirral Waters redevelopment scheme that received planning approval in August.
The plans for Liverpool Waters have been scaled back from the initial footage of some 20m sq ft. Plans for the controversial, mixed-use hotel and prime Grade A office scheme called the Shanghai Tower have also been revised, lowering the proposed number of storeys down from 60 to 55. If built, the scheme will still be the tallest tower outside London. Discussions with planning watchdogs English Heritage, CABE and Liverpool City Council resulted in building heights being restricted to 15 storeys at the waterside through most of the scheme. Much of the existing office accommodation in Liverpool is in much older, lower-rise property and would be dwarfed by high, multi-storey office towers.
Peel Holdings are aiming to promote the scheme to potential Chinese investors at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai that is due to end later this month. The aim is to promote Liverpool as a new international business destination with the city becoming the satellite location to service not just the UK but the whole of Europe. It remains to be seen if there is interest in such a large speculative development. As with the Wirral Waters sister development, both schemes have planned development timescales of 20-30 years and are unlikely to get off the ground without significant outside investment.
Cllr Joe Anderson, Labour leader of Liverpool City Council, said: “Liverpool Waters is a hugely ambitious and exciting scheme which has the potential to bring about the transformation of an area which has been in need of regeneration for decades. The scale of the project is breathtaking and it will benefit generations to come. We, along with other agencies, have worked with Peel to help shape this scheme but we do recognise that there are great sensitivities attached to it and there will be full consultation before a decision is made as part of the normal planning procedure to ensure the best possible outcome for the city.”
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles will now decide whether a public inquiry is required.
Posted in Merseyside |
Tagged Liverpool Waters, Peel Group, Planning |
Leave a comment
Newer posts →
← Older posts
