Thorpe Park HQ building launched by Scarborough
DEVELOPERS Scarborough Group International have launched the latest addition to the Thorpe Park masterplan, with the opening of the Paradigm building.
An event yesterday with 100 property professionals marked the completion of only out-of-town new office build in the Leeds area.
There the team, which included representatives from L&C Capital, Cushman & Wakefield and BNP Paribas, also discuss plans for the wider site.
Paradigm is a 31,650 sq ft headquarter office building at the gateway to Thorpe Park Leeds.
The Grade A, BREEAM Excellent office space at 3175 Century Way offers offices from between 2,300 to 31,650 sq ft.
Thorpe Park Leeds, off Junction 46 of the M1, has a gross development value of £500m.
It has 300 acres with 110 acres of Green Park and public realm, and areas which will be given over to residential use, with plans to develop 7,000 homes on the site.
Plans for it include a cinema, retail and restaurant offerings creating a community around the original business park.
Work on the leisure aspects of Thorpe Park are due to start by summer 2017 with completion in 2018.
Paradigm building, 31,000 sq ft at Thorpe Park Leeds
Kevin McCabe, chairman and founder of the Scarborough Group spoke to TheBusinessDesk.com at the launch. He said: “Thorpe Park is special for the North of England and the Northern Powerhouse. It’s been 25 years in the making and has evolved to include retail and leisure. It is a community business park now and it’s a massive deal for Scarborough – it means a massive amount of big business and development.
“To me the Northern Powerhouse is vitally important. What we want to do as a group is attract investors from the Far East because we’ve been out there for 14 years and secondly because we took Chancellor of the Exchequer out there, George Osborne who branded the Northern Powerhouse, out there.
“The impact of that visit on the Chinese, in Shanghai, Beijing, was massive. When President Xi Jinping came for MIPIM UK last November, he didn’t only come to London and stay in Buckingham Palace he came to Manchester as well. Before it was always London-centric, but now the Chinese will happily look at Northern Powerhouse cities and Leeds is top, or runner up to Manchester.
“The Northern Powerhouse branding has worked, you can mention commitment of central government and what they’re planning on spending on infrastructure up here.”
Gordon Aitchison, director of Investment and Development at Legal & General also said: “For Legal & General Thorpe Park is one of a number of large, strategic developments we’re working on for L&G Capital.
“The first one we did was MediaCity in Manchester, before Thorpe Park, followed by Central Square in Cardiff this year and we’re just about to announce another in the North.
“For us as a UK institution it helped us in that when we decide to invest in a project we have to meet with the council and in this case we saw them before we invested about developing leisure development, we felt it would be important for the evolution of Thorpe Park and create something really special, and we got full support from the council. On the back of that we decided to invest.”
Mr McCabe commended the work of architects, the Harris Partnership, Cushman & Wakefield and the others that had worked on the development of the site.
