Realty sells Gateway House
REALTY Estates is understood to have sold Gateway House, the ‘lazy S’ building next to Piccadilly Station.
LaSalle Investment Management is said to have paid £26m for the building which could be demolished to make way for a high speed rail terminal.
A spokesman for LaSalle declined to comment, and no one at Realty could be reached.
Realty, based in the city, acquired the site in 2008 and won planning permission for a 270-bed hotel in December 2011 as part of a wider £35m regeneration project which included 40,000 sq ft of office space on a site behind Gateway House.
Architect Hodder + Partners has drawn up plans for the site and in 2012 Realty struck a deal with London-based Max Serviced Apartments to run the converted building as a 182-bed apart-hotel. It has since leased retail space to Waitrose.
In November Realty’s head of developments Shahram Sakhdari told TheBusinessDesk.com Gateway was still a live project and had a 20-year life span even if high speed rail becomes a reality.
A planning framework drawn up by Bennetts Associates for Manchester City Council shows the site of Gateway House as a terminal for high speed trains which will be arriving in Manchester in 2032 if the plan goes ahead.
