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.
Ingka Centres, part of the Ingka Group, which also includes Ikea, has acquired Brighton’s main shopping centre, Churchill Square, for about £150M. Ikea UK and Ireland will include an Ikea City store format at the centre.
Churchill Square attracts more than 11 million visitors annually, and tenants include Inditex, Apple, Next, H&M, Urban Outfitters and Levi’s, alongside a food court with McDonald’s, Krispy Kreme and Ed’s Easy Diner. Ingka Centres has also acquired Chartwell Court, a residential tower block on the site, two attached car parks and a leasehold on a third car park.
The new Ikea City store will open on the site of the former Debenhams.
“It fits perfectly into our global expansion strategy, allowing us to transform a traditional retail space to a meeting place that is much more than just a place to shop,” Ingka Centres Managing Director Cindy Andersen said in a statement.
DEALS
UBS has undertaken a £110M recapitalisation of 560 single-family rental units developed and managed by Placefirst, a Matter Real Estate portfolio company.
The deal was undertaken through the creation of Matter UK Residential Income Fund SCSp, which is designed to acquire and hold stabilised UK SFR units.
The fund’s initial transaction includes the acquisition of units located in five sites across five different English towns: Leeds, Liverpool, Dudley, Sheffield and Accrington.
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Downing has invested circa £27M into a specialist and elderly residential care business after it exited a specialist residential care home in the West Midlands in June.
It said that it has supported an existing operator to acquire a closed 120-bedroom property near Leicester, which will be refurbished and repositioned from an elderly care home into an 80-bed specialist care facility delivering acute needs-based services to vulnerable end users.
It has also provided investment for a trading 59-bed, purpose-built specialist care home in Stafford and a recently constructed, 68-bed premium elderly residential care home in Fife, Scotland.
DEVELOPMENT
CBRE Investment Management and Gensler have partnered to reposition 10 Gresham Street and secure planning consent from the City of London Corporation for a comprehensive refurbishment.
The 145K SF Grade A office refurbishment will introduce a 5,100 SF roof terrace to create a series of distinct zones, from outdoor meeting areas and flexible event space to a sensorial garden, with a 2,700 SF multipurpose indoor rooftop pavilion.
The companies said that the refurbishment aims to minimise the embodied carbon through recycling and repurposing materials, preserving the original structure, including its facade, and removal of fossil fuels to create a zero-emission building in operation.
“In the City of London currently, there’s increasing demand and limited supply of premium-quality, highly sustainable office space focused on employee health and wellbeing,” CBRE IM Director and Office Asset Manager Matthew Barratt said in a statement.
Mace has been appointed and will commence construction in the fourth quarter, with completion forecast in Q1 2025. Knight Frank and Cushman & Wakefield are joint leasing agents.
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Stanhope has confirmed a major overhaul of a 1960s-built government building in Victoria, with staff at the business department due to move out of 1 Victoria Street in January 2024.
Plans by Stanhope to redevelop the building in London’s Victoria will go on public display this month.
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Planning consent has been granted by Tunbridge Wells Borough Council for the major redevelopment of a former oil depot into a 91K SF, BREEAM Excellent self-storage and workspace hub at the gateway to the town.
Investor and developer Compound acquired the site as the first location of its £200M self-storage platform, with plans to create flexible warehousing and self-storage spaces as well as workspace and meeting facilities for local businesses.
Due for completion in Q1 2025, the development is part of the Compound Self Storage portfolio, which has a development pipeline across Kent, Surrey and Milton Keynes of 300K SF, with a further 200K SF under offer in London.
Compound has also announced the acquisition of a 2-acre site in Milton Keynes where it plans a major mixed-use development, replacing an obsolete office building with 88K SF of coworking, meeting room and self-storage space.
LEASING
Orchard Street Investment Management has completed a new letting with UK world foods wholesaler Shankar Foods at its Nimbus Park industrial estate in Dunstable.
Shankar Foods has agreed to a five-year lease across one of the estate’s seven units, taking 29K SF at a headline rent of £10.50 per SF to support its distribution activity and UK expansion.
The letting follows refurbishment of the unit, improving its EPC rating to B. The refurbished facility utilises LED lighting, electric vehicle charging and rooftop solar panels.
The refurbishment forms part of a wider retrofit programme at Nimbus Estate, with a focus on solar PV installation. Unit 3, which is still available to let, has been upgraded to EPC B, with the project delivering circa 13K SF of industrial space.
Orchard Street was advised by Adroit Real Estate Advisors and Hollis Hockley.
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Property investment management company AshbyCapital has signed four new retailers at Kensington Arcade and Wrights Arcade in west London, including a new 2,200 SF flagship branch of Urban Greens.
Urban Greens has made Wrights Arcade in Kensington its fourth location in London and first opening in the neighbourhood sector, adding to existing branches in Canary Wharf, the City and St. James’s and will open in January 2024.
AshbyCapital has also completed three lettings at the neighbouring Kensington Arcade. Lingerie brand Intimissimi has taken 1,100 SF, and Chango Empanadas has taken a 470 SF store, both of which are due to open early next year, while patisserie Aux Merveilleux de Fred has opened its new 1K SF store in the arcade.
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The Whiteley Bayswater has continued to rejuvenate its centre with the announcement of a further three brands that have agreed on leases at the former retail emporium on Queensway.
The 1.1M SF redevelopment project's commercial space has reached 65% let, with Effie by Pachamama Group, Guillam Coffee House and Browfique joining Six Senses, Everyman Cinema and Third Space.
The Grade II-listed building is part of a £3B regeneration initiative in Queensway, spearheaded by the Queensway Joint Steering Committee.
PEOPLE
The Government Property Agency has appointed Mark Bourgeois as its interim CEO, replacing Steven Boyd, who is stepping down from the CEO role in November.
Bourgeois will join the GPA toward the end of November and will work to deliver a “smaller, better-connected, better-quality and greener government property estate,” GPA said.
The former managing director for the UK and Ireland division at Hammerson and executive director at Capital & Regional, Bourgeois has extensive experience in regeneration, including acting as interim corporate director for city development at Liverpool City Council.
Since launching in 2018, the GPA has grown to manage nearly a million square metres of the government’s property portfolio, acting as an expert partner to departments for strategic planning and workplace services, including design, property technology and workplace experience.
