Posted on September 29, 2010 by John Cronin
An office block known as The Building, Chiswick High Road, London is to welcome a new tenant after a 10 year lease deal has been secured.
IVG Institutional Funds GMBH, represented by commercial property agents Savills and Altus Edwin Hill, has let the ground floor at The Building, 578-586 Chiswick High Road, London, W4 to Television Versioning & Translation Ltd (TVT).
TVT, a media supply services business, has signed a new 10 year lease on office space totalling 3,923 sq ft and has agreed to rental prices of £25 per sq ft (£98,075 pa). Other tenants at the property include Taleo and Broadcast Text International. Two floors remain available comprising 5,000 sq ft each.
The Building is a 5 floor, fully glazed office building offering total floorspace of approximately 25,000 sq ft. Floor plates from 2,550 sq ft are available. The office has a BREEAM rating of ‘very good’. The Building has 12 secure car parking spaces available for tenants.
Andrew Willcock at Savills comments: “The Western corridor of M25 has seen a good level of demand from corporates this year and The Building, which lies close to the heart of Chiswick, continues to attract excellent levels of interest.”
Posted in London |
Tagged Rental Prices |
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Posted on September 29, 2010 by John Cronin
The first phase of the plans to redevelop the Taunton former livestock market into a £270 million office and residential scheme have been approved by Taunton councillors.
Regeneration specialist, St. Modwen, the development partner of Taunton Deane Borough Council on the Firepool scheme, has been given permission to press ahead with plans to transform the 4.5 acre Priory Road Car Park into new office and residential space.
Firepool (pictured – click for larger), the first major phase of Project Taunton, is the largest town centre regeneration project in the South West with the potential to create up to 4,000 local jobs. The objective of the scheme is to make Firepool the new commercial heart of Taunton. The large-scale development will offer over 400 homes, leisure facilities and 500,000 sq ft of new office space. Phase one of the development will make available 113,000 sq ft of office floorspace. The development will offer “distinctive offices to accommodate major occupiers, alongside smaller scale buildings for local businesses”.
Pete Davies, development manager for St. Modwen, said: “This is very positive news for Taunton town centre. We are already progressing plans to build the first office building at the site and this announcement shows the Council’s commitment to the development as a major new build office scheme supporting the town and county’s growth”.
Posted in Somerset |
Tagged firepool, Planning, Speculative Developments |
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Posted on September 28, 2010 by John Cronin
Royal London Asset Management (RLAM) has secured grants worth £4.7m to help fund a further phase at a business park it owns in Sefton.
RLAM and partner Industrial Securities has been awarded the funding for the next development phase at the large Atlantic Park scheme on the former Rolls-Royce plant in Sefton, north of Liverpool. The grants are made up of £3.1m from the European Regional Development Fund and £1.6m from the North West Development Agency. The project will involve site preparation and infrastructure works to bring forward 22 hectares of land with the potential to develop approximately 807,300 sq ft of office and industrial accommodation, create 1,500 jobs and attract £40 million of private sector investment.
An existing single-storey office building, is to undergo a comprehensive programme of refurbishment and remodelling to provide Grade A office accommodation. Named Caspian House, the building, formerly an administration office for Rolls-Royce, will provide a modern office space of around 37,700 sq ft and will be available to let either as a whole or sub-divided into two individual self-contained units.
This latest phase of development complements Atlantic Park’s existing five-storey flagship Grade A office building, No 1 (pictured), which was completed in 2008 to increase the quality of out-of-town office accommodation in the local area. The building offers ‘L’ shaped floor plates ranging in size from 8,100 sq ft to 9,982 sq ft. The offices have BREEAM ratings of ‘very good’. Rental prices are available upon application.
Gareth Dickinson of Royal London Asset Management, the owners of the site, said:
“Investment of this scale allows us to kick-start the next phase of our speculative development and is a vital step towards making Atlantic Park a key employment site.
“A 36 week programme of works can now begin and will see us bring additional high quality space and much needed choice to the office market in the north of Liverpool. Caspian House will be completed by the end of the year and the site wide infrastructure will be in place by March 2011.”
Marketing agents include Mason & Partners.
Posted in Merseyside |
Tagged Renovations, Speculative Developments |
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Posted on September 27, 2010 by John Cronin
The biggest office deal this year in the Jewellery Quarter district of Birmingham has just been signed.
Chord Developments have secured a ten-year lease deal with global insurance brokerage Willis Group Ltd. The insurance company has taken 10,000 sq ft (929 sq m) including 12 car parking spaces on the ground floor at 40 St Paul’s Square (pictured). The company moves from 30 St Paul’s Square.
Will Monaghan, lease manager at Willis, said: “Willis has been established in the Jewellery Quarter for many years and we were keen to remain here. 40 St Paul’s Place fitted the bill as it is a landmark building in a convenient location and it offered the space we needed on one floor plate.”
The letting to Willis is Chord’s second following the launch of the office space in May this year. In August construction and fit-out company ISG took 3,314 sq ft of floor space in the building. 40 St Paul’s Square is part of the mixed-use St Paul’s Place scheme, comprises 25,400 sq ft/2,360 sq m of office space and 148 apartments. The building offers the biggest floor plates in the Jewellery Quarter.
40 St Paul’s Square boasts a full Grade A specification, including air conditioning and raised flooring in a renovated, period building overlooking a fully landscaped courtyard. The office space is over two floors and is accessed via a boutique hotel-style lobby, with marble and granite wall cladding.
Quotes rental prices for floorplates between 4,500 – 20,295 sq ft are from £18.50 per sq ft per annum. Floor space within the building amounts to a total of 35,973 sq ft.
Nick Williams, head of office agency at Savills, said: “Chord has scored two significant lettings in a matter of months. It’s a ringing endorsement of the product and the location. 40 St Paul’s Place offers a city centre-type specification, in a landmark building, but at two-thirds the rental costs of similar new Grade A stock.”
Birmingham City Council’s plan to develop the Jewellery Quarter into a hub for creative businesses has attracted significant amounts of private investment into the Quarter in recent years. The area of Birmingham is so-called as it used to house the numerous jewellery and coin manufacturers in the city.
Chord Developments are spending in excess of £35m on their St Paul’s Square development. Other office developments in the Jewellery Quarter include the St Georges development (93,528 sq ft) and the Birmingham Mint redevelopment that will offer 60,000 sq ft of floor space in the first phase.
Posted in West Midlands |
Tagged Jewellery Quarter, Rental Prices, Snowhill |
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Posted on September 27, 2010 by Rob Powell
A Glasgow businessman has come up with an unlikely incentive to help sell office space in the city – a free Aston Martin DB7.
Tim Twiddy is offering the car, worth approximately £17,000, as a freebie to the buyer of an office suite he is selling in Bath Street.
Mr Twiddy tells Scotland’s Daily Record that his wife had told him he had to get rid of the car – his second Aston Martin – so by selling the office and disposing of the car, it would “make both my commercial and domestic life much happier all round”.
The 1300 sq ft office suite was originally part of the head office of the City of Glasgow Friendly Society and is being marketed for £120,000.
Posted in Glasgow |
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Posted on September 24, 2010 by John Cronin
A new £3.5m Grade II-listed rural office development on the outskirts of Sheffield has been short-listed for the prestigious RIBA EM Awards.
The Hathersage Business Centre (pictured) is shortlisted for an award, which are handed out by the Royal Institute of British Architects to recognise excellence in architecture.
It follows the conversion of a range of semi-derelict listed buildings, which originally formed the coach house, dovecote and stables to Hathersage Hall. The completed scheme has received acclaim for the careful redevelopment of the listed buildings while at the same time achieving a Category B energy performance rating and for the implementation of sustainable building practices such air source heat pumps for under floor heating.
The newly constructed, premium grade offices offer a total of 12,500 sq ft of floor space with individual office suites ranging from 460 sq ft to 2,195 sq ft. Several of the units have been let or are under offer. Rental prices have not been made public.
The winners of the RIBA awards will be announced at a presentation ceremony in Leicester on September 30.
Posted in South Yorkshire |
Tagged Listed Buildings, Serviced Offices |
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Posted on September 24, 2010 by John Cronin
Plans for a £20m office block development in Maidenhead have been approved by the local council.
The nine storey, 35m high building at the highest point will be the second tallest building in Maidenhead after Berkshire House, another multi-storey office block in the town that is 39m at the highest point. Despite some local opposition planning panel members argued the development, on a gateway site to the town in Market Street, will be key to the town’s rejuvenation plans by bringing a surge of footfall in 600 workers. Two existing office buildings on the development site at 27 and 29 (Albany House) Market Street are to be demolished.
The new office block will be located in the commercial area of Maidenhead and will offer approximately 7,000 sq m of floor space in a building of 9,200 sq m gross. The planning committee was satisfied that the development is capable of achieving a ‘Very Good’ BREEAM rating. It is not yet known if the floorplates will be rated as Grade A.
Aegon Asset Management who plan to lease out the office space are the financial backers behind the development and the project will be undertaken by Capella Estates. Architects for the scheme are Darling Associates.
Posted in Berkshire |
Tagged Planning |
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Posted on September 23, 2010 by John Cronin
Architects David Chipperfield have won the competition for a commission to design the replacement for Elizabeth House in London.
The Elizabeth House site is currently occupied by a 1960’s building standing on a prime site in York Road, London right next to Waterloo Station. Previous plans for three towers (pictured), two for office space and the other for residential, had been much derided and were dubbed “the ugly sisters”. One of the office blocks planned was for 27 storeys, the other 22.
The £1 billion development plans put forward by Allies and Morrisons were initially blocked in 2008 by London Mayor Boris Johnson on the grounds that the towers would spoil some of London’s historic views, including those of Big Ben. After appeals by the developer, the then Communities secretary John Denham vetoed the plans in 2009 because “they would harm the Westminster World Heritage Site and local listed buildings including the Royal Festival Hall”.
Whilst indicating that tall office and residential blocks were generally suitable for the site, Denham concluded: “the two office towers did not possess the balanced, sculptural or elegant qualities crucial to the success of tall buildings”.
The existing 240,000 sq ft block and development site was bought by London & Regional Properties from P & O Estates for £85m in an all-cash transaction in March 2010. The new owners indicated at the time that they would put forward revised plans for a smaller footage development.
Having won the design commission from competing practices Grimshaw Architects and Hopkins Architects, Chipperfield now have the task of producing a design that is sympathetic to the area.
Headline rental prices for serviced offices within Elizabeth House are approximately £29/sq ft for centrally heated floor spaces and approximately £23/sq ft for comfort-cooled areas.
Posted in London |
Tagged Elizabeth House, Planning, Rental Prices, Serviced Offices |
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Posted on September 22, 2010 by John Cronin
The multi-million pound Snowhill development in Birmingham is set to recommence after being put on ice during the recession.
RT Group Development (RTGD) is understood to be looking at bids from several construction companies for a £45m office development at Birmingham Snow Hill rail station.
The office block, to be known as Two Snowhill, is the second of four phases in the development of the site, where RTGD owns 1.86 hectares of land. One Snowhill (pictured), a 12 floor office block is complete and is already occupied. Construction work on the second phase was suspended during the recession after Anglo Irish Bank, the original financier, pulled out. It left the office partially built, with two concrete cores sticking up into the skyline. The 14-floor office development, which will include basement car parking for over 140 cars is expected to be completed in late 2012.
The Snowhill development (the name is a deliberate concatenation of Snow Hill) is a mixed-use scheme offering premium office floorplates, residential housing and public spaces. The development is located in Birmingham’s business district and offers easy access to both rail and road networks.
One Snowhill is a £66m office block providing Grade A rated floorplates over 11 floors – the ground floor is used for retail outlets. Office tenants include KPMG who pre-let 118,403 sq ft back in 2006 – the deal at the time being the largest pre-let in Birmingham since 2002 and the largest outside of London since 2003. The other significant tenant is Barclays Bank, who let 98,000 sq ft of floor space and moved into the building in January this year.
When complete Two Snowhill will be the larger of the the two office blocks with an extra three floors of office space and offering 310,867 sq ft of floor space in total. Law firm Wragge & Co has agreed a pre-let deal for 60% of the building.
Joint marketing agents are Jones Lang LaSalle and CB Richard Ellis.
Posted in West Midlands |
Tagged Snowhill |
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Posted on September 21, 2010 by Rob Powell
A major new office development in Bournemouth has been given the go-ahead by local planners – three years after it originally gained planning permission.
The Troika Development was given planning consent for the construction of 25,000 sq m of B1 office space following a public inquiry in 2007, but with a three-year lifespan attached to the permission.
The developers failed to build in that time and were required to resubmit their application this year.
Despite local concerns about the large development in Riverside Avenue, which counts the Royal Bournemouth Hospital and a nursing home amongst its neighbours, a planning board at Bournemouth Council has given the green light to the scheme.
One elderly resident of the nearby nursing home voiced his disappointment at the decision in the local paper, the Bournemouth Echo. He said:
“We are very disappointed. We are going to be surrounded by four-storey buildings. At the moment we appear to live in beautiful countryside.”
The developers also have existing planning consent for a large Park and Ride site adjacent to the prospective offices.
Posted in Dorset |
Tagged Planning |
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