Acting on behalf of Peter Gadsby’s Cedar House Investments, FHP have pre-let East Point Retail Park in Nottingham jointly with the Leeds office of JLL.
Formerly home to ‘Sunlight Laundry’, the 50,000 sq ft development on Daleside Road close to the Lady Bay Retail Park is now home to 5 national operators, who were all secured before completion of the development.
FHP have also been retained as managing agents for the development and have been instructed to sell the investment alongside JLL later this year.
The anchor is an 18,232 sq ft Aldi store alongside a Smyths Toys of 16,000 sq ft and a Just for Pets. They will be joined by a Poundland and a Costa Coffee Drive Thru in February.
The development has already created 120 jobs.
The anchor tenant, Aldi, is currently experiencing outstanding sales and is now ranked 6 th amongst food retailers in the UK and this store appears to be no exception, having received large crowds for their opening day. Along with Lidl, they attracted over a million more shoppers in December 2015 than they had at the same time a year ago, according to research from Kantar Worldpanel.
David Hargreaves of FHP commented:
“Cedar House originally had planning consent for a 55,000 sq ft food store but as a result of structural changes in the supermarket sector due to the rise of Internet shopping, our increasing use of convenience stores for ‘topup shopping’ and the growth of Aldi and Lidl off the back of their fantastic advertising campaigns, there wasn’t an occupier for such a large store.
Working with Peter Gadsby we recommended a repositioning to create a high quality ‘Value led Retail Park’ and were able to secure Aldi as our Anchor tenant. This plan was supported by Nottingham City Council, and backed by Cedar House who had the courage and finances to build out the scheme with just Aldi signed up.
Their courage was rewarded as we managed to secure tenants for the remaining accommodation well in advance of completion of the building works.
Since opening, the tenants have traded exceptionally well which will only improve further when Poundland and Costa open.
FHP are currently working on a number of similar schemes in Derby, Nottingham, Doncaster and Mansfield now that the formula has been proven successful.”
Peter Gadsby, Chairman of Cedar House Investments, commented on the positive impact of the development:
“This is one of the few major retail developments being delivered in the East Midlands and underpins the regeneration of the wider Waterside area in Nottingham. It provides vital retail facilities for the people of Sneinton and for the emerging housing development in the Trent Basin.
This development is a great example of how as a Developer, you need to remain nimble and react quickly to changes in the market place. The agents recommended a repositioning; we followed that advice, and subsequently had all units Pre-Let by completion, so putting our faith in FHP was well and truly the right move.”
David Hargreaves of FHP and Nick Ferris of JLL acted as joint agents.
