Welsh insurance giant Admiral is expanding into JR Smart’s new No 3 Capital Quarter office building in Cardiff city centre.
It has taken a 10 year lease on the remaining 65,000 sq ft within No 3 Capital Quarter at a quoting rent of £22.50 per sq ft, and expects to move its staff in by May next year.
No 3 is the latest speculatively-built Grade A office building on the 10 acre Capital Quarter development fronting Tyndall Street, providing 77,931 sq ft of Grade A, BREEAM Excellent office accommodation. It was completed by JR Smart in August this year, with construction of the adjacent 97,000 sq ft No 4 office building due to be completed next March.
A spokesman for JR Smart said: “We are enormously proud to have completed and delivered another high-quality office building with the fantastic support of our employees, sub-contractors and professional team.”
Admiral is Wales’ only FTSE 100 business and celebrated 25 years in business this year. With its headquarters at Tŷ Admiral, Cardiff, the company employs 7,200 people in south Wales at bases in Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. It was recently named as one of the best places to work in the world.
Huw Llewellyn, estates director of Admiral, said: “We’re continuing to grow as a business as we develop our product offering and No 3 Capital Quarter gives us a great option with good accessibility to our head office. We were considering our options with our existing landlords in Cardiff and the terms we negotiated with JR Smart were competitive and have allowed us to continue to expand in the local market.
“The design of the office lends itself to creating an exciting environment for our fantastic staff and our unique collaborative working culture. This further underpins our commitment to Cardiff, alongside our other South Wales offices in Swansea and Newport. We’d like to thank J R Smart and their team for their approach to securing Admiral at No 3 Capital Quarter.”
Matt Phillips, head of the Cardiff office of property consultancy Knight Frank, said: “Attracting such a prominent company is fantastic news for Capital Quarter, and rewards JR Smart’s wisdom and timing of speculatively constructing brand-new energy efficient office buildings, with first-class facilities and a central, accessible location.
“No 3 and No 4 Capital Quarter are the only Grade A buildings being delivered in Cardiff before the end of 2019 and we are receiving a huge amount of interest for the vacant space in No 4 from a large number of different potential occupiers.
“The provision of its own car park and the ongoing landscaping of the Western Courtyard public space add to the attractions of Capital Quarter.”
Admiral will join a list of high-quality occupiers at Capital Quarter including Which?, Public Health Wales, Opus Energy, Atkins Finance Wales, Alert Logic, WSP-Parsons Brinckerhoff, Network Rail, Home Office, and Lambert Smith Hampton.