SevenCapital has secured long-term leases with major supermarket chain Lidl at two of its development sites in Birmingham, UK. The two new stores will be located in Birmingham city centre and Erdington, just outside the main city, totalling 50,128 square feet and creating 80 jobs across both stores.
The agreed city centre lease is for a 27,254 sq ft retail unit on the ground floor of SevenCapital’s 220,000 sq ft Broadway development in the Five Ways area of the city. Previously, the entire floor of the development was fully occupied by Tesco, before the company vacated the building as part of its nationwide estate rationalisation programme in 2016.
The new Lidl unit will help to fill the void left by Tesco, joining recent tenants The Gym Group and vehicle rental firm SIXT, which operates from a new build facility on the site of the former petrol station. Both occupiers are currently on 16 and 15-year leases respectively, along with Colmore Tang Construction, who made the Broadway building its new headquarters in 2016 now employing close to 100 people from the location.
The store will benefit from the existing 500 space multi-storey car park. Enabling works are set to start imminently with the new store expected to be complete ready for trading in early 2020.
With a total 75,325 sq ft commercial floorspace in Broadway, this latest deal with Lidl means the building is now 68% let with just 23,658 sq ft now available.
Broadway is also home to SevenCapital’s 214-apartment development 105 Broad Street, which sits above the commercial units, and forms part of the developer’s wider 1 million sq ft regeneration of the areas surrounding Five Ways island. This includes SevenCapital’s four-star Park Regis Hotel (253 rooms), 1 Hagley Road apartments (271 homes) and the two new build residential apartment complexes; The Lansdowne, SevenCapital’s first build-to-rent development (206 homes), and St Martin’s Place (228 homes), the company’s flagship Birmingham development launched in June 2018. In total the developer is contributing 919 new homes to this area of the city.
The second contract is an agreement for lease subject to planning, for a new bespoke Lidl format store, earmarked for the 5.5-acre site in Erdington, Birmingham, that SevenCapital acquired from Sainsbury’s in late 2017.
Enjoying prime frontage to Sutton Road, on the northern edge of Erdington town centre, the 22,874 sq ft store will be new-build, including 120 new car parking spaces, and construction is expected to complete within 12 months once planning is agreed.
SevenCapital previously obtained planning on the same site to convert an eight-storey former office block into an 87-apartment development, now known as Nexus Point – which has been a hugely successful scheme now sold out ahead of its expected December 2019 completion.
The remaining part of the site fronts Orphanage Road where planning permission is sought for a new development of 32 family homes – a mix of two-, three- and four-bedroom houses, through SevenCapital’s new housebuilding division, SevenHomes. Applications for this and the Lidl supermarket are currently in the process of being registered with Birmingham City Council and will be available for public consultation soon.
Ed Purcell from Creative Retail, who acted on behalf of SevenCapital for both leases, said: “The securing of Lidl for Broadway and Erdington is fantastic news. The collaborative approach between SevenCapital, Lidl, Colmore Tang and Creative Retail has worked well in securing new leases in a retail market which is currently challenging in parts and evolving quickly. The letting of the former Tesco supermarket at Broadway is particularly pleasing as this former supermarket had a difficult configuration and has showed that a collaborative approach will lead to success.”
Phil Carlin, managing director at SevenCapital said: “These are two major deals for both sites in Birmingham. Lidl has firmly positioned itself at the forefront of today’s shoppers thought process as a trusted retailer offering a quality product. These sites are perfectly suited for their continued growth strategy and are a welcome catalyst for further regeneration within Birmingham.
“For SevenCapital this adds to a growing list of achievements in working with institutional occupiers and successful delivery of town centre redevelopment and regeneration projects. We are pleased to form this new relationship with LIDL and look forward to delivering these two new stores.”