Birmingham Games Letting Is A Game Of Two Quarters

Birmingham’s 2022 Commonwealth Games organising committee has signed for 73K SF at One Brindleyplace, and in one swoop accounted for 37% of the city’s first quarter office take-up.

The deal cements a strong first quarter for the Birmingham office market, with take-up of 194K SF the best since 2016. Without the Games letting, the quarter would have looked distinctly thin. The second largest transaction of the quarter was to law firm Irwin Mitchell, which took 47K SF at the Colmore Building.

According to KWB, which has published its latest market analysis, the rest of the first half of 2019 does not look so encouraging. “Some companies are taking the view that if they don't need to make a decision imminently [they] should hold off,” KWB Director of Office Agency Malcolm Jones said.

Two of the top three deals of Q1 were to public sector bodies. In addition to the Commonwealth Games, the third largest letting was to the NHS, which took 11K SF at the Wesleyan Building/1 Colmore Circus.

"The public sector, and companies servicing the public sector, have frequently appeared at the top of the tables over recent years," Jones said. "Last year, we saw large lettings to the Secretary of State, Home Office, General Dental Council and Network Rail, to name a few. These lettings represented a significant amount of the space taken overall in 2018.

"Given that as much as 800K SF of office space requirements for quasi-governmental bodies are in the marketplace at this time, the public sector is likely to continue to top the list of quarterly transactions."

The five-year lease to the Commonwealth Games Organsing Committee will allow the 32-strong organisation to mushroom to more than 1,000 staff, ahead of the world’s second largest sporting event.

The office is just round the corner from Birmingham’s international arena, venue for many of the events, Insider reported.