Homes England and Network Rail have appointed JLL to bring a major levelling up investment opportunity in the North to market.
The firm has been appointed to seek an investment partner for the multi-billion-pound York Central, a 111-acre development site around the city’s railway station.
The site, which is one of the largest brownfield city centre sites in the UK, has consent for 2,500 homes, around 1m sq ft of offices and a 400-bedroom hotel.
Some £155m of funding has already been secured for the long-delayed project to bring forward vital infrastructure works, including a bridge over the East Coast Main Line railway.
However, Homes England chief executive Peter Denton told EG that the agency and Network Rail were well aware that they would not be able to deliver the project on their own, so would shortly be launching the opportunity to market in the hope of bringing in an investor and partner to “do the doing”.
“The agency and Network Rail are of the view that we are not here to build things,” said Denton. “There are lots and lots of talented people who can do that. We’re here to create a spark of opportunity and to get control and clarity.”
A Homes England spokesman added: “We have JLL appointed to support us in seeking a partner. We’ll be going out to the market shortly to get views from interested parties on the commercial phase and also the entire site.”
In an interview with EG this week, Denton outlines how Homes England wants to work much more closely with the commercial real estate sector as part of its role of being a regeneration body, not simply an enabler of affordable housing.
“The agency is incredibly well known in its core markets of the housebuilders, SMEs and local authorities, and I don’t want to detract from that. Far from it, I want to build on it,” Denton told EG. “But where it has naturally been weaker has been in the commercial real estate world, because we haven’t needed to engage as much there. We’ve fundamentally turned a 180, and they are probably the ones that have or can get control over some of the most catalytic regeneration opportunities, certainly in the Midlands and the North.”
After decades of delays, infrastructure works at York Central have now finally begun, and Denton said Homes England is already in talks with commercial tenants about the office space. A number of government departments have previously been linked with the site.
York Central has long been cited as a “King’s Cross of the North”. Plans to redevelop as much as 200 acres around the site have been mooted since the early 2000s but have hit various hurdles along the way.
In 2006, the plans to bring in a development partner were put on hold when Associated British Foods announced the closure of its nearby sugar factory. The financial crisis caused the plans to stall again in 2009, despite interest in taking on the development project from Grosvenor, Muse, Landsec, P&O Estates and Westfield.
City of York Council appointed Arup and Colliers International to bring forward the site again in 2014, before replacing them with KPMG and Savills in 2016.
That same year, Homes England, Network Rail, City of York Council and the National Railway Museum formed the York Central Partnership to try again to bring the site, which has been locked to regeneration for almost six decades, back to life. Homes England and Network Rail have supported the development of the site through land acquisition and masterplanning and will now oversee the infrastructure projects.
The area has enterprise zone status and is expected to create as many as 6,500 new jobs, boosting the local economy by £1.2bn.
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