Aspin reveals White Rose Office Park plan

PLANS for the next phase of development at Yorkshire’s White Rose Office Park are being formalised as its owner David Aspin looks to accelerate work when market conditions improve.

No 3 Munroe Court would see 35,000 sq ft of office space created at the popular business park, which is located on the outer Leeds ring road.

Mr Aspin, whose Munroe K property investment and development business is behind the 580,000 sq ft White Rose Office Park, said he was confident things were looking up for the property industry.

Speaking to TheBusinessDesk.com, Mr Aspin said: “We’re just starting to work up the plans for the next stage for the time when market conditions are right to build up.

“We do have our own equity to invest and we’d look to do that.”

White Rose Office Park, which is fully let by tenants including HSBC, De Puy and O2, already has planning permission to create a creche where staff at the site will be able to have their children looked after.

“We’re trying to provide a brilliant working environment for people to work,” said Mr Aspin, who lives in Florence, Italy. “It’s the single largest employment area in Leeds.

“It’s all about managing and looking after our customers – we’ve got 5,500 of them at White Rose – in the best possible manner.”

The White Rose Office Park has created a sense of community by organising events such as chess competitions, fun runs and social groups.

Mr Aspin (right), who completed a £107.7m management buyout of British Aerospace’s non-core property assets in 1995, including the land where the White Rose Business Park is now located, believes the centre, which has seen seven new buildings constructed over a number of years, has helped to provide a positive “gateway” into the city.

He is upbeat about the future for Leeds and the Leeds city region and believes the building of Trinity Leeds, and the proposals for Hammerson’s Eastgate Quarters scheme in the city, have given a real fillip to the property market.

He says confidence is the watchword for any market, and that it especially applies to the property sector. And he believes he is seeing degrees of confidence return.

However, he said: “If you go back to the last major property recession in the mid-90s it was four, five, even six years of difficult times and this is not much different.

“Things started to turn south early in 2007 so we’re four years through. We’ve got to get used to the new normality and from that grow a level of confidence.

“But I think here in this region we do need to pat ourselves on the back and move on. We’ve got politicians and they need all the help they can get from the private sector to move Leeds in the right direction.”