Property investors snap up £24m shopping development
PROPERTY investment company Palace Capital has acquired a Halifax leisure development owner for £24m.
Gregory Projects (Halifax) owns the Broad Street Plaza, a leisure development in the town.
Broad Street Plaza comprises of 113,000 sq ft and a multi-storey car park.
It was completed in 2012, and built for a cost of £40m, creating 400 jobs for Calderdale.
Gregory Property Group refinanced the site in 2013 to accelerate growth plans. At the time, chief executive Barry Gregory told Property Week that they were aiming to focus on smaller sites, as Broad Street Plaza had been difficult to sell.
It currently produces a net income of £1,780,000 per annum, which will be rising due to fixed rent increases to £1,940,000 per annum in 2017.
Broad Street Plaza is let to a number of major tenants including JD Wetherspoon, Pizza Express, The Restaurant Group, Nando’s, Mitchells & Butlers, Prezzo, TGI Friday’s, Pure Gym, Vue Entertainment, Apcoa Parking and Calderdale & Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust.
The company is assuming the existing bank facility with Barclays Bank of £15m which runs until October 2017 and is reducing by £200,000 per quarter.
It has also entered into a new £30m five-year facility with national Westminster Bank, of which £10 million is fixed and £20 million is a revolving facility.
Knight Frank acted for Palace Capital.
Neil Sinclair, chief executive of Palace Capital, said: “Palace Capital is delighted to announce another significant acquisition of a major regional leisure scheme. Broad Street Plaza was chosen by The Variety Yorkshire Property Awards in 2012 as the Development of the Year.
“This is a well located leisure scheme with a superb quality of tenants on good leases with continuity of income for an average of at least fifteen years.
“In addition the new, larger bank facility we have entered into will provide additional resources at lower interest rates for further acquisitions and working capital for a number of asset management activities over the coming months. The Group continues to be conservatively geared with net debt at 38% and holds £20m of unencumbered properties.
“We continue to seek further targets preferably off market which meet with our strict acquisition criteria.”
This is one of a number of projects undertaken by Palace Capital. It has recently received planning to convert Hudson House in York into 139 flats, as well as owning Bank House on King Street in Leeds.
