This Week's London Deal Sheet
The Deal Sheet is a weekly compilation of Greater London and beyond's biggest leases, sales, financing deals, construction updates and personnel moves. Have news you’d like to submit? Email mark.faithfull@bisnow.com.
Singaporean investor City Developments Ltd has bought the St Katharine Docks marina and office complex on the eastern edge of the City of London from Blackstone in what is one of the largest new London office deals since interest rates spiked last summer.
CDL paid £395M for the 515K SF scheme, less than the £435M Blackstone was going to sell the building for in 2018. It opted to refinance rather than sell the asset at that time.
St Katharine Docks is central London’s only marina and comprises 445K SF of offices, 70K SF of shops, restaurants and bars, and a 10-acre, 160-berth marina.
Blackstone acquired the asset through its deal to take Nick Leslau’s Max Property private in 2014. It paid £448M for the business, which also included other London office assets and a large industrial portfolio. It has leased up vacant space in the office element of the scheme with tenants including WeWork and the New College of Humanities.
The deal takes CDL's UK portfolio to more than £1B, the company said.
ACQUISITIONS
DTZ Investors has completed the purchase of Purley Cross Retail Park in Croydon for £59M from Oval Real Estate. Green & Partners and DTRE acted jointly for the vendor with HampsonWall representing DTZ Investors.
The property is a prime retail park comprising 126.4K SF of lettable floorspace across five units that occupy an 8.6-acre site. The scheme is fully let with a weighted average unexpired lease term of 12 years to break and 12 years to expiry, producing an annual net rent of £3.4M from the occupational leases.
The tenant-mix includes retailers Aldi, M&S, Smyths Toys, Currys and Starbucks.
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Regal London, in partnership with alternative asset manager Cheyne Capital Management, has acquired Great North Leisure Park, an 11.2-acre site on High Road, North Finchley in London Borough Barnet.
Bordering Glebelands Open Space, the retail park is earmarked by Barnet as a strategic site for residential-led redevelopment.
Great North Leisure Park will also house the third Regal London Real Estate Academy. The first was launched in Watford in 2022, with the second in Brent earlier this year. Each Academy provides construction qualifications and routes to employment for 70 military veterans and their families, and for those who may find employment challenging.
This is Regal London’s sixth local area project, alongside sites in Brent, Camden, Hackney, the City of London and Watford. Regal London has a contracted development pipeline of more than 8,500 homes and 650K SF of commercial space within the M25.
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Industrial units totalling 1M SF in Knowsley and Skelmersdale have been sold to a partnership between Brookfield Real Estate and Copley Point.
The £125M deal also included Tritax Big Box REIT’s 330K SF asset in Worksop, which is let to Cerealto.
In Skelmersdale, Copley Point and Brookfield have acquired a 470K SF DHL distribution hub. DHL sold the unit to Tritax in 2014 for £28M on a 10-year leaseback, which expires in 18 months.
In Knowsley, the JV has taken control of the 578K SF Matalan warehouse, which has more than 13 years left to run on its lease.
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Pontegadea is understood to be looking to acquire redeveloped offices at 33 Foley Street from Abrdn for around £80M, representing a circa 4.5% yield.
The Standard Life Investments Long Lease Fund bought the former BBC office for £70M from Kier Property in a sale and leaseback in 2017 and Savills is advising Abrdn on the sale.
Kier had completed a full redevelopment and extension of the building to create a total of 42K SF of Grade-A offices and, as part of the purchase, Standard Life Investments secured a 25-year lease.
Pontegadea is Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega's real estate business and the building was originally built as a printing works in the 1920s.
FINANCE
BentallGreenOak has announced the final close of its third UK Secured Lending Fund, with a total of £1.433B in commitments from over 25 global institutional investors.
The fund surpassed its initial target of £1B, said the company, and is BentallGreenOak’s third fund for UK secured lending and the sixth fund in the firm’s broader European Debt strategy, which has invested more than $5B to date.
The fund will provide direct lending across a range of real estate asset classes, including office, logistics, and multifamily residential property, focused on the midmarket but with the ability to provide large-cap loans.
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Real estate finance provider Maslow Capital has completed on a facility to support the development at 100 West Cromwell Road, a 50:50 joint venture between UK developer SevenCapital and real estate investment manager MARK.
Ardmore Construction has been appointed as the main contractor and the scheme comprises seven residential blocks, with a mix of studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, along with duplex apartments and three- and four-bedroom houses.
In all, 40% of the homes will be affordable and the 29-storey residential tower will become the tallest building in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
LEASING
London-based real estate developer W.RE has let more than 33K SF of its department-store refurbishment project in Clapham Junction. Third Space, the luxury health club and gym, will take 28K SF across three floors, while 5.5K SF on the ground floor will be taken by Albion&East, the Imbiba-backed London bar group.
The renovated Arding & Hobbs building will feature five studios for Third Space’s classes, including Reformer Pilates, Hot Yoga, a high-intensity studio and a cycle studio and the club will also have a track and rig area.
Albion & East will feature its own ‘Urban Distillery & Tasting Room’, distilling the first vodka for the bar group.
The Arding & Hobbs building has been part of Battersea’s heritage since 1910, as one of South London’s first purpose-built department stores and is an important local landmark.
W.RE’s refurbishment is turning the former Debenhams store into a 90K SF flexible retail and leisure space across the ground and basement floors, with office space to the upper floors with a new rooftop extension.
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U.S. media giant Warner Bros. Discovery has appointed JLL to market for sublease around 200K SF of offices at two headquarters buildings at 98 Theobalds Road and 160 Old Street, both in London.
WarnerMedia and Discovery completed a merger with Warner Bros last year and Welput owns the 134K SF offices at 98 Theobalds Road in Bloomsbury, which Warner Bros. Discovery occupies in its entirety on a lease until 2034. It bought the company's long-term Midtown site in 2013.
