A 10-month-old Sheffield property company has negotiated a deal for Marks & Spencer which will see the retailer take more than half-a-million square feet of space at the city’s International Rail Freight Terminal. The agreement is the firm’s fifth high-profile deal in as many months.
Acting for landlords CBRE Global Investors, Commercial Property Partners (CPP)sealed a 10-year lease with the high street fashion and food chain for 647,000sq ft of warehouse space at the rail and road trans-shipment centre. The annual rent was just under £2.6m.
In a separate deal CPP acted for Logistics Property Partnership (LPP), the landlords of a building close to Junction 34 of the M1 motorway, where third party logistics provider Great Bear Distribution has just taken 412,519sq ft on a 15-year-lease.
“These two deals are a massive endorsement of the Sheffield region as an attractive location for logistics and distribution companies,” said CPP co-founder and partner, Toby Vernon. “Over one-million square feet of industrial space being let in Sheffield tells its own very powerful story.”
Launched last September, Vernon felt his company had “hit the ground running and is now an established player in the region’s commercial property market”.
In adjacent counties, CPP oversaw the sale of two industrial buildings and a newly developed mixed-use site in three separate deals together worth more than £20m.
The company advised on the sale of a 264,450sq ft industrial warehouse in Sutton-in-Ashfield, north Nottinghamshire, to Legal and General Property and the disposal of a 152,000sq ft industrial unit at Magna 34 Business Park, in Rotherham, to London Metric Property.
“Both transactions were great results in the current market where there is lots of aggressive bidding for prime, long-let industrial assets with good covenants,” explained CPP partner, Roger Haworth, adding that: “Because of the nature of its tenants, Royal Mail, and the quality of the build, the Magna deal in particular proved key in attracting investor interest.”
Haworth was also instrumental in the £555,000 sale of the Riverview mixed-use site at Quest Park, Doncaster, to Harrogate-based property development and investment firm Marrtree. Developed by Sladen Estates and Peveril Securities, Riverview is the third and final phase of development at Quest Park and includes offices, industrial units and and a showroom on a 3.3-acre site.
“Whilst these recent deals are superb news, the volume of large footprint warehouse enquiries remains relatively thin,” summed up Toby Vernon. “However, we expect demand levels to continue to improve during the course of the year primarily driven by the continued growth in online retailing.”
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