The management of Stockley Park is gearing up to the challenge of a fully let business park.
Stockley Park is probably the most ambitious single business park development yet seen in the UK. Two freeholders own the 100-acre first phase of the park comprising 1.5m sq ft of business space in eight buildings, a basis which presents a challenge to the management of the complete development. For the success of Stockley depends ultimately on the quality of that management.
The first phase of five speculative buildings provides business space from 4,000 sq ft upwards on flexible FRI leases. Companies may take one whole building, which can differ in net usable space from 32,000 sq ft to over 1,000,000 sq ft, and a flexible lease can still be negotiated on the whole or part of the building. There is a multi-tenanted building — known as the seed building — which allows companies, particularly international ones, to gain a toe-hold in the park, affording them an opportunity to establish their business first, ready to expand when the time is ripe.
The buildings are finished to shell and core and the tenants can exercise their own preferences on the way they want them fitted out. If a company wants to move in before a certificate of practical completion is issued, the developer will consider issuing a certificate of readiness to allow the tenant to take possession for fit out and so achieve occupancy at an earlier date. Car parking allocation is one for every 350 sq ft gross.
Part of the process of establishing the success of the park in the perception of the companies it hopes to attract is the quality of the landscaping. Members of the building management team led by John Harvey-Samuel are under no illusions about the importance the environment plays in attracting and keeping research and development divisions in the fields of electronics, telecommunications and biotechnology. Therefore, the developer is concentrating on “greening” the buildings’ surroundings.
Stockley’s management programme, with an attention to detail which matches the design of the buildings, is committed to tending to some 100,000 mature trees planted on what was formerly derelict land, keeping artificial lakes clean, caring for swans and Canada geese and allowing local wildfowl to nest. A head gardener is to be appointed whose experience was acquired on country house estates.
Service charges for such environmental husbandry are gleaned from estate rent charges, which amount to a current charge of 53p per sq ft. The beauty of estate rent charges is that tenants pay only for the portion of the park which is complete. When the other phases come on stream, the charge will be further spread out.
To defuse any likelihood of disagreements within the hierarchy about the way the park should be run, a separate company, Stockley Park Management Ltd, has been formed and given the ownership of the common areas of the 100-acre first phase for the purpose of imposing a unitary management system.
The company comprises representatives of the development hierarchy: Trust Securities Holdings (a wholly owned subsidiary of Stockley plc), Stanhope Construction, project managers for the developer, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (funders for the first phase of the park) and the London Borough of Hillingdon. USS retains the freehold of the first eight buildings and Trust Securities Holdings will retain the freehold of another 1m sq ft of completed space in successive phases. Stockley itself has been taken over recently by the Mountleigh Group, although it is not clear if they will have an interest in the management team.
The management company in turn is advised by Jones Lang Wootton Estate Management Services. “We are all working to achieve environmental standards and according between partners,” says James Warriner of JLW EMS. “If differences of opinion exist, they would be solved on a mutual basis”. A separate division of JLW is advising USS on its investment.
The commercial park is surrounded by some 250 acres of land scheduled to be handed back to the London Borough of Hillingdon at the end of the project, some seven years from now. A separate management team will be created to manage a central amenity centre which will include a sports hall, swimming pool, squash courts, gym and bars. Banking facilities and a range of shops will also be included.
Apart from landscape maintenance, SPML’s other responsibilities include maintaining and cleaning the roads on the park together with street lighting, signs and security. Refuse collection facilities are provided from discreetly positioned storage points hidden by trees and shrubs. The tenants are expected to manage the facilities in their own buildings.
Yet the longest-serving tenant has been there only six months, hardly time for the management team to cut its teeth on knotty problems emerging from any business integrating vital operations into new surroundings. The park’s success depends so much on the management team’s ability to liaise with tenants that it is continually honing its approach. “We are anticipating tenants’ needs as much as possible and can react promptly if and when required,” says John Cottingham, director of SPML.
In formulating management and maintenance plans to fine-tune its problem-solving service to tenants, SPML wants to develop a distinct response which tenants will only find at Stockley Park — an approach termed “after-sales service”. It hopes such an approach will mean Stockley Park will vie with the City of London and other centres for first-class tenants. And, more importantly, it does not want to be heavy-handed.
“We aim to develop a harmonious relationship with tenants,” says John Cottingham. “We have a solid working relationship with them. If you have a happy tenant you are more likely to have a stable investment.” This view is supported by JLW EMS: “If tenants want to do something, then, provided it is reasonable and fits in with what we are creating in the park, they can,” adds Graham Howat.
The team is at present involved in a number of plans to do with maintenance staff on the park which involve finding the right balance between outside contractors and in-house teams. “We are preparing a structured employment plan for the park for board approval which must be sufficiently flexible yet not create an administrative structure which becomes too unwieldy and top heavy,” says Graham Howat. “For example, we prefer to have a contract arrangement with a security firm because it is flexible but as phases develop we may bring in our own team.”
Careful attention is also paid to the costs of the various operations. “We worked out how much the first phase cost to operate even before the first buildings were finished because we were subject to careful budgeting,” states James Warriner. “Our budgets are continually being revised and we have a budget variances schedule where we go through the annual estimated costs, then the actual costs, and through this system we can see month by month exactly what running costs are going over expenditure and under expenditure so we can keep it in line for the park as a whole.”
The management company retains a permanent presence on-site, so that tenants have immediate access to a problem-solving network without having to wait. This includes making the tenants feel as comfortable as possible in their respective buildings even though part of the development is still under construction.
“One of the things we say to tenants when they come to Stockley Park is that we will do our utmost to ensure they do not feel they are on a construction site,” John Cottingham points out. “We have fences which hide construction activities at ground-floor level and we do not allow construction traffic to use roads which are being used by tenants.”
