runtwood Estates is to create a new south Manchester business park after buying Cheshire’s Booths Hall Estate.
The locally based property empire controlled by the Oglesby family has paid Scottish Widows more than £20m for the 210-acre (85ha) site near Knutsford.
The estate includes 226,000 sq ft of office space along with two fishing lakes, a sports field, the Toft cricket club, an 18th-century hall, a working farm and woods.
Bruntwood said the estate had “significant redevelopment potential”.
Existing tenants include NNC and Alstom.
Director Chris Roberts said: “Any redevelopment will be customer led, and our initial priorities are to ensure that the estate is meeting the requirements of tenants and, through intensive management, enhance an already spectacular environment.”
For Bruntwood — the unchallenged king of the Manchester office market, owning what it says is 20% of the stock — the deal continues a spending spree that saw it add 1.6m sq ft to its North West property portfolio last year.
Roberts said the business park setting at Booths Hall “complements our existing holdings in Knutsford and elsewhere in south Manchester, which are all in town centres”.
He added: “The south Manchester business park market has taken a bit of a pounding of late. “However, we think Booths Hall is sufficiently differentiated given the quality of its location and natural setting.”
Earlier this year, the company told EG it would “retain its reputation as the most active speculative developer in the North West in 2004” and would develop and launch onto the market around 325,000 sq ft in the course of the year (20 March, p93).
King Sturge acted for Scottish Widows on the sale of the Booths Hall Estate, while Lewis Ellis advised Bruntwood.
