Developer ProLogis, has bought Gazeley’s former G.Park Dunstable site in Bedfordshire.
The 32 acre site at Boscombe Road, Dunstable was owned by ICP Asset Management. Gazeley announced it would no longer be involved in G. Park Dunstable, earlier this week. It had fulfilled a Development Management role for site owner ICP.
Commenting on this decision, Alex Verbeek, UK country ddirector at Gazeley said: “We are reluctant to give up the Development Management role at G. Park Dunstable, however our efforts need to be channelled and it makes sense that we concentrate on land where we already have funds invested.
“As Gazeley has no cost exposure to G. Park Dunstable, we decided to give up our involvement to focus on our wholly owned sites and Joint Venture projects and make necessary investments to enable future development at the speed required by our customers in current market conditions.”
The site had planning for a 755,000 square foot unit. However, in line with market demand on the southern M1 corridor, ProLogis will shortly be submitting a new planning application to Central Bedfordshire Council for two distribution units of 300,000 square feet and 360,000 square feet respectively. Both buildings, which may be built speculatively, have been designed to achieve BREEAM 2011 ‘very good’ accreditation and the best EPC rating possible for their size.
The transaction is an important step towards ProLogis’ goal of providing the best customer opportunities in London and the South East and it marks ProLogis’ first land acquisition in the South East of England since 2007. “This transaction is excellent news for the market and for Dunstable,” said Andrew Griffiths, managing director, ProLogis UK. “We continue to invest in strategic locations with the aim of offering our customers the best range of distribution opportunities in the UK market. There is a shortage of new facilities in this size range in the South East market and we are pleased to have secured a deliverable site on the M1 corridor, which we anticipate will be of great interest to our customer base. We will make a decision on speculative development once the revised planning application has been approved. Our decision will also be subject to ongoing pre-let discussions.
As of June 30, 2012, ProLogis had approximately 18 million square feet completed and under development in the UK, as well as 1,075 acres of land available for future development.
