Raft of deals at ‘vertical village’ as owners increase investment in high-rise

Schroder Real Estate Investment Management has announced a cluster of new lease agreements at its Manchester city centre asset, City Tower.

This follows Schroders having further increased its investment into the building with a range of new concepts and occupier-focused amenity offerings.

Oodle Car Finance, a tech-driven car finance platform, has taken 66 desks on City Tower’s 24th floor, relocating from Regus in Peter House.

A further suite on the 24th floor is under offer, due to complete soon.

Independent cyber risk management advisory firm, Coalfire, will join Oodle, having completed a lease on the 28th floor of the building.

The Coalfire team will be taking 5,466 sq ft of space on a 10-year lease and will be relocating from its current office at Manchester One on Portland Street.

Amey’s Manchester outpost is relocating within the building, reaffirming its commitment to City Tower, located in Piccadilly Gardens.

The public sector infrastructure support service provider, which has 19,000 employees across the UK, has been based at the building since 2012.

Rob Cosslett, deputy fund manager at Schroder UK Real Estate Fund, said: “City Tower’s diverse tenant mix is part of what makes the building one of Manchester’s most exciting office schemes.

“The vertical village that we have worked hard to curate over the years encourages collaboration between our occupiers, who run a wide range of businesses from the building.

“These three new transactions will help to further expand that proposition, and to breathe additional vibrancy and community into City Tower. These are ambitious, future-focused businesses that naturally align with what we are trying to achieve at the scheme.”

He added: “We are looking forward to working with the Coalfire and Oodle teams, and supporting their growth with our unique, occupier-first approach to workspace.”

The announcements come as Schroders recently completed three significant investment projects at City Tower, part of the ongoing strategy to refurbish and enhance the building that has been progressing since its acquisition in 2014.

The new initiatives within the building include the Sky Lounge on Level 28, the Elevate at City Tower concept, and an upgrade to the cycle storage and showering facilities, branded The Velozone.

The Velozone facility is situated on the second floor of the 28-storey tower and has capacity for 130 bikes, boasts nine shower units, 48 lockers and a bike repair station. These newly upgraded facilities will complement the wider occupier health and wellbeing initiatives already in place at the building.

Sky Lounge is located on the 28th floor and brings a ‘members only’-style breakout space for City Tower occupiers. The lounge will act as a place in which tenants can come together, host informal meetings, or entertain clients.

Next door is a Scandinavian-inspired wellness suite, with tiered seating which will enable both yoga classes and formal presentations to be held in the room.

Schroders has also unveiled details of its new flexible workspace offering at City Tower, Elevate.

Elevate was conceptualised by building advisors OBI following extensive market research and has been engineered to be an environment that caters for modern businesses, with a focus on the wellbeing of its occupants.

The suites come fully fitted and enable the businesses based within Elevate to have their own front door and their own identity.

Its aim is to simplify the process of securing a workspace, removing the complexity of relocating and promoting a landlord-occupier relationship by building long-lasting partnerships.

Rob Cosslett added: “We want businesses that choose Elevate to be with us for the long term – this isn’t a run-of-the-mill flexible office offering which has been hastily pushed into a building to align with a trend.

“Elevate is the result of months of research and careful planning. The pandemic has completely changed the way in which people work and want to run their businesses, and flexibility is now key.

“However, businesses who are more familiar with traditional forms of leases and enjoy their own single-occupancy units will find it difficult to adapt to the co-working model – they shouldn’t have to compromise on their ‘own’ space and their own identities, which they could have spent years cultivating and building, for the sake of increased flexibility.

“We hope that with Elevate, we can provide a genuine solution for businesses who are already mature and are perhaps looking for a slight change in circumstance, supported by the wellness amenity provided at City Tower.

“The Sky Lounge is a brilliant addition to City Tower and we’re looking forward to seeing how our tenants decide to use it. It offers unique panoramic views of Manchester in carefully-designed surroundings – it’s a great asset to the building.”

City Tower is owned in a joint venture held between Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust, the actively managed UK REIT, Schroder UK Real Estate Fund, and Immobilien Europa Direkt.