A £132.4m leisure portfolio once owned by Northern Irish tycoon Patrick Hegarty’s WG Mitchell business has been snapped up by investors.
The three-asset portfolio, dubbed Project Lagan, was in the hands of receivers following the collapse of the WG Mitchell vehicles.
The properties – the Radisson Blu hotel in Edinburgh (pictured), Quay leisure park in Glasgow and the Park Inn in Manchester – have been sold separately to Deka, DTZ Investors and Ability Group respectively.
Receivers at Deloitte were appointed to the companies that controlled the assets by Bank of Ireland.
Administrators were first called in to large parts of Hegarty’s £500m Edinburgh- and Londonderry-based business in 2009 as property values crashed and it breached covenants on the loans securing its portfolio.
CBRE and JLL, acting on behalf of the receivers, marketed the buildings as a portfolio but chose to sell the assets separately following a competitive bidding process.
Ability Group paid £20m for the Park Inn in Manchester, a 252-bedroom hotel in the city centre, a circa 6.7% yield.
Deka bought the 238-bedroom Radisson Blu hotel in Edinburgh for £60m, a 5.7% yield.
DTZ Investors bought Quay leisure park in Glasgow for £53.5m, a 6.53% yield. The site on the Clyde comprises 13 properties let to leisure operators including Odeon Cinemas, the Original Bowling Company, Alea and Mecca Bingo, and restaurant groups Ashoka, Nando’s and Chiquito.
The sale of the Quay is the first major leisure disposal in Scotland since the September 2014 referendum.
Toby Hall, senior director of leisure investment at CBRE, said: “This disposal indicates that, for well-let leisure assets, institutional demand still remains very strong despite the uncertainties around devolution and potential effect on pricing.”
DTZ advised DTZ Investors.
