Restoration of Temple Works expected top £35m

Temple Works

Work to return the historic Grade-One listed Temple Works building in Leeds to a ‘shell form’ state will cost at least £35m, the director of the property firm which acquired the building last year has revealed.

David Hodgson, head of strategic development at property development firm CEG, spoke at TheBusinessDesk.com’s property lunch on Thursday

CEGs David Hodgson and Kayley Worsley of TheBusinessDesk.com

sponsored by Bevan Brittan, when he updated delegates about several regeneration schemes of importance across the region and beyond.

Talking about the Temple Works scheme, which CEG bought around 18 months ago, Hodgson said: “We think it is going to be in the order of £35m to put that building back into a shell form, that’s not even for the use of it  – that’s just to stop it falling over. That’s the scale of operation we are talking about.”

He added that the building was “in the worst physical shape you have ever seen” when CEG bought it at auction.

Hodgson explained that since then, CEG had undertaken a huge amount of work to “understand the building” – spending a total of around £4.5m on surveys so far to understand “how this building is built and how it is still standing.”

Hodgson added that given the state of the building at present, it technically “shouldn’t be able to stand.”

Explaining why CEG – which also has plans in for a major £350m regeneration scheme on the Southbank – had made the acquisition, Hodgson said: “The reason we did that was that we felt it was more about custodianship than ownership.  We are the most recent custodians of this building for this city – it is that important to the city. It’s in the top 1% of most endangered buildings.

“We bought it because if it fell into ‘the wrong hands’  – somebody that didn’t understand it and wasn’t prepared to put the investment to put into it – then it would be a huge detraction for the re-development of the Southbank.”

He said that the firm was working hard to work out a way to regenerate the building alongside other plans for the area, putting Temple Works fully “back into use.”

TheBusinessDesk.com’s property lunch

This includes creating an extensive virtual reality video – only possible by taking around 15,000 photographs of the building’s interior and exterior. Arup has created the video, which means that a headset can be worn for surveys to be undertaken.

Hodgson said: “People talk about surveys being done with VR in the future. Well that’s what we are doing now at Temple. It’s a phenomenal bit of kit. What I find really interesting is that the people at Arup working on this aren’t engineers; they are game developers.

“They have interpreted the raw data from the engineers/surveyors and put it into VR. It’s incredible.”

He said it was incredibly important to draw upon the importance of the heritage of any site. He added: “I don’t want to detract from the commerciality of a building but we want to be able to use such buildings in a positive way.”

CEG is also undergoing the £400m Kirskall Forge development in Leeds. Plans for phase two of commercial space were revealed last month. The first

Kirkstall Forge Phase two

commercial building was completed in 2017 and construction work is now underway on creating housing prototypes for the site.

Hodgson said that successful  regeneration was about targeting untapped or unproven markets. He said: “We have a slight advantage here in that we are privately funded.

“That funding stream allows us to do two things. Firstly, we can go into untapped markets and back ourselves and our opinions.”

He said, for example, that at Kirkstall Forge it wouldn’t have been viable to source bank finance and also achieve letting prices at the values they were aiming to secure unless they did that directly.

So, CEG undertook a process whereby it liaised with partners to include elements the developers felt would make it a success, like building a a new train station at the location, for example; because CEG believed it was a viable location. “We backed ourselves and in turn that saw us achieve prices of £23/£24/£25 per sq ft.”

He said that CEG had just achieved £57 per sq ft for the small suites at Kirkstall Forge “because the demand is out there.” He added: “That’s short term temporary let, so not comparable to a longer, larger let. But it just goes to show there’s people that want this space.”

CEG’s £350m Southbank scheme

Hodgson said that the firm’s privately funded backing meant CEG were genuinely long-term investors in every site. He said: “This means we can concentrate also on putting investment into quality public realm, quality environment; and getting that right up front.

Talking about Kirkstall Forger, he said: “We were working with Leeds City Council, WYCA, LEP; which meant that once we invested in the site. They sorted out the funding for and loan agreements for the train station and the bridge. But we have also gone further and put things like structures into the river bank to act as big open space.

“We have done that because we want to be there for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years managing these buildings and so are prepared to take a longer-term view on schemes.”

He added this confidence also allowed the company flexibility in design, giving the ability to respond to different markets.

Hodgson also talked about how schemes needed to be more than just the buildings  – he said it was also about how to attract the desired footfall and occupiers so that it becomes a community. In this way, he shared that music and culture is essential to bring developments to life and make them a long-term success. “Not only to kickstart a development but also to give it longevity,” he said.

“We are trying to do that with the Southbank. We have cleared a site out and have applied for planning and licensing. The idea is that we have more than a construction site; with gin gardens and live music, and street food. That just drives people down.”

He said the site had been used successfully for this reason previously, including hosting Oktoberfest.  Hodgson added: “We have this huge idea to launch in the next three or four months about opening up a semi-permanent venue down there. What more people are latching onto with this kind of this is something incredibly important – it’s about giving life to developments.”

Hodgson gave Spinnigfields in Manchester as a good example of this working elsewhere – with the additions of “things to do beyond 5.30pm.”

He said he felt that all too often the idea of creating a community through development schemes fell into a “tick-box exercise.”

Hodgson added that the Southbank investment and development was about joining the community together. He added that the community of Holbeck had for a while felt “cut off” from Leeds city centre and gave them the impression that developments in the city centre just “aren’t for them.”

He added that CEG  had engaged with the community to shift this perception.  “That’s not going to add anything in terms of pounds to the scheme but it does make people feel part of it; which in turns leads to them embracing it more. It then becomes part of the city rather than just being ‘just another development.’ “

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