Property Development & Investment Throughout the UK
Among those who have sold their interest to the partnership are Toys R Us and the ice rink, which are both moving out of town to Bride Hall’s Cardiff Peninsular Retail Park.
Warner Estate is to redevelop the Waterside at its Hale Leys Shopping Centre in Aylesbury with Bride Hall Developments to feature 265,000 sq. ft. (24,619 sq m) of retail, including a 80,000 sq. ft. (7,430 sq m) department store and a 50,000 sq. ft. (4,645 sq m) foodstore. Warner will invest up to £100m.
Privately owned developer Bride Hall has made a head start on two rival Cardiff retail schemes by securing supermarket Morrisons as its anchor tenant.
Morrisons has exchanged contracts to buy an anchor store at Bride Hall’s £50m scheme, which has been known as Cardiff International Sports Village but is to be renamed Cardiff Peninsular Retail Park.
Bride Hall and Morrisons declined to say how much the retailer had paid, but sources said it would pay just under £15m for an 80,000 sq ft (7,430 sq m) store on the site.
The deal catapults Bride Hall ahead of a rival scheme at Leckwith, promoted by Cardiff City Football Club and Capital & Regional and Land Securities’ and Capital Shopping Centres’St David’s 2 city centre scheme.
The Leckwith project is intended to fund a new stadium for the football club, chaired by Sam Hammam, and local sources said he and Cap & Reg had hoped to secure Morrison. Costco is now interested in taking space at Leckwith.
At Cardiff Peninsular Retail Park a detailed application for a foodstore has been submitted and is expected to be heard at a 25 May committee hearing. Work on this element is likely to start on site in September.
Bride Hall already had consent for a 160,000 sq ft (14,865 sq m) non-food element on an adjacent site and is in detailed talks with Toys R Us to relocate from the city centre to a 40,000 sq ft (3,715 sq m) store.
Work in the non-food element is also set to start on site this year, for completion by September 2006.
Bride Hall is to pay the city council £37m for the land for the retail park scheme. This will fund infrastructure and a new swimming pool for Cardiff, which will replace a pool that was demolished to make way for the Millennium Stadium in the late 1990s.
These sports-related elements are being developed by privately owned Orion Land & Leisure, which also plans a 4,000-seat arena for ice hockey team Cardiff Knights.
However, there is now some doubt over a proposed casino for the site, following the government’s reduction of the number of regional ‘super casinos’ from eight to one.
Harvey Spack Field and Colliers CRE are advising Bride Hall; Rees Richards is advising Morrison.
Folkestone’s dream town centre is officially in the hands of developers after a last-minute dash to exchange land contracts.
A major milestone was reached on Wednesday March 16 when, after more than 20 years of planning, Shepway council finally signed over land for a major new shopping complex to Bride Hall Property Developments.
Developer Bride Hall and joint venture partner Fermac Properties have sold their Londonderry retail park project to two parties.
Supermarket group Tesco has bought one element of the Faustina Retail Park, and a private syndicate has bought the other.
Tesco is paying around 12m to buy a third of the 18 acre (7.3 ha) site for an 80,000 sq ft (7,432 sq m) store, for which it will seek planning permission.
It wants a large store to compete with Sainsbury’s, which is located on the other side of the River Foyle in Northern Ireland’s second-largest city.
The other part of Faustina has already been prelet to B&Q for a 102,000 sq ft (9,476 sq m) DIY retail warehouse at around 13.50/ sq ft (145.31/sq m). The private investor syndicate, called Gold 8 Property and formed by Pinder Fry & Benjamin, has agreed to buy the store and is thought to have paid around £22m. Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker acted for Gold 8.
Faustina, where work has begun, is the largest retail park to be developed in Northern Ireland this year in a region that has seen burgeoning out-of-town development in recent years. According to a government report by Roger Tym & Partners more than 581,000 sq ft (54,000 sq m) of consents for mainly retail parks have been given since 1996 in Londonderry alone.