Moorfield has purchased Cobalt 23 on the Cobalt Business Park in Newcastle in partnership with Highbridge. The 128,500 sq ft vacant high quality office building was bought out of receivership.
The building has the largest floorplates on Cobalt Business Park and could be occupied on a single-let basis or sub-divided for multi-let occupancy.
Cobalt Business Park is the largest business park in the UK and the premier office park in the north east. It is currently 90 per cent let and comprises a number of blue-chip occupiers, including Accenture, Hewlett Packard, P&G, IBM, Siemens and Santander. The park was developed as an Enterprise Zone and almost all the other office buildings on the site are fully let.
Charles Ferguson-Davie, Moorfield Group CIO said: “We saw this as a good opportunity to purchase a modern office building on the premier business park in the North East in conjunction with the developer of the Park, which is due to benefit from new infrastructure investment. We will together with Highbridge invest in the building and re-launch it to the market as either a single let HQ or for multi-let occupancy.
“There is very little good quality available office supply and we believe that we can offer a very attractive proposition to corporate occupiers requiring high quality space in a well-connected location.”
The Newcastle office market has seen improvement in recent years and the vacancy rate is low; helped by positive net absorption, limited new development and conversions of office buildings to alternative uses. Rents are growing and with a lack of development pipeline the fundamentals are set to remain robust.
Cobalt Business Park is set to benefit from substantial infrastructure investment including c.£75m of road improvements, including the new triple-decker roundabout being added to the A19 and the recent installation of a 25 mile dark fibre network connecting Cobalt business park to Newcastle city centre and improving the park’s connectivity. There is also the potential introduction of a Metro station on the park, which has received in principle funding approval.
Guy Marsden, of Highbridge Properties Plc said: “Cobalt 23 is an office that provides the best of both worlds. It is a significant energy efficient, environmentally sustainable office building which has the flexibility to be sub-let in floors.”
Cobalt Business Park is located five minutes from the A1, 10 minutes from Newcastle city centre and 20 minutes from Newcastle International Airport. Both the city centre and the airport can be accessed by the Metro and the park offers a regular shuttle to the nearest station.
The agents for the building are BNP Paribas and Bray Fox Smith.
