Capital and Centric’s £1m a week commitment
PROPERTY investor and developer Capital and Centric is ploughing £1m a week into construction projects in regeneration areas across the North West.
And co-founders Adam Higgins and Tim Heatley, who own the company behind the forthcoming £150m Kampus development in Aytoun Street in Manchester city centre, say they are hungry for more “difficult” projects.
The duo, who amalgamated their separate companies – Capital run by Higgins and Centric by Heatley – in 2011, have carved out a niche in the refurbishment of business premises and retail, after setting out to grow their company organically without taking on bank debt by sourcing funding from organisations like the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
The Kampus development is a 50/50 joint venture with Henry Boot Developments and looks set to include more than 500 apartments, hotels and leisure space aimed at independent leisure restaurants and artisan bars on a 450,000sq ft site.
The site, previously known as the Aytoun Street Campus, was home to Manchester Metropolitan University business school until 2012, when it relocated to the new £75m All Saints Campus off Oxford Road.
Capital and Centric have however decided against extending the Aytoun Street development to include the former London Road Fire Station which is currently being sold and is the subject of a local conservation comaping, despite Heatley and Higgins visiting the site recently.
Precise plans for the area will finalised later this year before they are submitted to Manchester City Council but guidelines are contained within a Strategic Regeneration Framework agreed last month.
For Manchester-based Capital and Centric the Kampus scheme is the ideal model of how their plans to continue regeneration schemes in the future.
“We’re bidding on a £100m scheme in the Midlands at the moment,” said Higgins. “We are involved in five projects that spend £1m a week on construction right now.”
Higgins said working with local authorities and on refurbishment of old buildings is the ideal scenario for the company.
“We have done office refurbishments in Liverpool and we have been one of the city’s most active developers in the last four to five years,” he said. “We would like to do more in Manchester.”
Project Capital and Centric are looking to replicate around the North West include the 50,000 sq ft Speke Business Park with Liverpool Vision, and 20,000 sq ft Lightbox on the Wirral, a project with Wirral Borough Council, which is now under construction.
The company has also worked with Rochdale Development Agency, Barnfield and the North West Development Agency to deliver the 250,000 sq ft Crown Office Park which is now built, with another 70,000 sq ft under construction.
Planning permission has also been granted on the Littlewoods Project, a 150,000 sq ft development for a hotel, offices and business units with partners Liverpool City Council and the Homes and Communities Agency.
Tenants are already signing up for the converted 40,000 sq ft Tempest block in Liverpool city centre, completed with the ERDF, while work is underway on the 44,000 sq ft Digital Village industrial site at Salford with partners ERDF and Salford City Council.
Meanwhile, the 20,000 sq ft Bunker Building at Edge Lane, Liverpool, again partnered by Liverpool City Council and ERDF is complete and available for letting.
An injection of £2m from ERDF has also been forthcoming for the speculative 40,000 sq ft developments, Hangar One and Two, which are being built at the Estuary Commerce Park site in south Liverpool.
“We are building a good relationship with Liverpool City Council,” said Higgins. “A key strand of our future development is continuing to work with the public sector.
“We like sites that are more complicated and like to get stuck into them. Most of our sites have been quite difficult. This has been the backbone of our business over the four or five years.”
