Bowmer + Kirkland has been appointed by Legal & General to build a 12-storey, 200,000 sq ft workspace at Ralli Quays in Salford, overlooking the Irwell. As Place North West reported, L&G has commissioned the scheme.
Who is spending the money
Legal & General is one of the few institutional investors that consistently develops offices outside London, and it keeps appearing in our coverage. It’s the developer and landlord behind Maker and Faber at Riverside Sunderland, where the DWP took 55,000 sq ft last month and Just Eat sits in the sister building.
Patient institutional capital is what regional office markets have been short of. A pension and insurance business building 200,000 sq ft speculatively in Salford is a longer-term bet than most developers can make.
The market it’s landing in
This is a lot of office space to commit to in a market where hybrid working permanently reduced how much desk space companies take.
The bet is the same one Igloo is making with the £70m One Founders Place in Newcastle, and Network Rail with the £40m refurbishment of Princes Exchange in Leeds. Occupier demand has concentrated rather than disappeared. Companies take less space overall and insist it’s the best available, and a lot of them can no longer take gas-heated buildings at all because it breaks their own carbon commitments.
Most of the North’s existing stock is exactly that. Liverpool is trying to shift 85,000 sq ft of empty offices at about £38 a foot, which is what the other end of that market looks like.
Salford, again
Salford turns up in this briefing more than almost anywhere. Ralli Quays, 218 affordable homes at a former Swinton toy factory, the step-free access programme at Swinton station, Peel selling The Alex at the Quays, and the 78-storey Regent Retail Park scheme still waiting on redetermination.
The borough is carrying an unusual amount of development for its size, and it’s worth watching whether the infrastructure and the affordable housing keep pace with the towers.
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