‘Buyer found’ for key Central Village building
THE developer Merepark is understood to be in the process of selling the Watson building which was to form a major part of its £160m Central Village scheme in Liverpool.
The 80,000 sq ft, eight-storey building sits next to Lewis’s on Renshaw Street and was to be a four-star hotel under the original Central Village plans.
TheBusinessDesk understands an unnamed buyer has been found for the site.
Altrincham-based Merepark struck a deal with the London-based Millennium & Copthorne Hotels group in 2009 to operate a 200-bed Millennium Hotel from a new building on the site of a Rapid paint shop and the neighbouring Watson building which has a grade II listing.
Work was due to start in 2012, while a sister hotel under the Copthorne brand would be built in 2013. It is not known how a sale of the site will impact on previous agreements and the wider Central Village plan. Merepark declined to comment and no one at CBRE, which is understood to be handling the sale, could be reached.
Merepark bought the Watson building and the neighbouring Rapid site in 2008 in a joint venture with the Irish developer Ballymore called Capital Regeneration Limited. In the same year it bought the Lewis’s building in a joint venture with previous owners Capital & Counties, a subsidiary of Liberty International.
Work on the Lewis’s building stalled earlier in the year when Merepark’s construction arm went into liquidation. The building, which was being converted into 80,000 sq ft of offices and a 126-bed Adagio apart-hotel, was around 85% complete and the hotel had already opened for business. It has since appointed Mansell, a subsidiary of Balfour Beatty, to complete the work.
The Central Village scheme also includes three renovated buildings on Bold Street and a Q-Park multi-storey car park on Renshaw Street that have been completed. The Millennium and Copthorne hotels were part of a second phase that also included the 75,000 sq ft leisure and retail Boardwalk building and 20,000 sq ft of retail space on three floors above Central Station.
