The developer behind Coventry city centre’s Friargate project has revealed that two potential occupiers, including a top hotel, are considering taking space at the 3.2m sq ft scheme.
Work is due to start on site this summer.
Speaking at a private breakfast launch in Birmingham this morning, Stephen Reynolds, director of Friargate Coventry LLP – a partnership between Dublin-based developer Cannon Kirk and Coventry city council – said detailed talks were now taking place with a private sector office tenant, following the council striking a deal to house a new 100,000 sq ft headquarters there last year. The partnership is also aiming to land a deal with a hotel operator for a new hotel of up to 250 bedrooms on the 36-acre site.
Four 100,000 sq ft office buildings, plus around 100,000 sq ft of hotel space, in addition to the council’s new headquarters, make up the scheme’s first commercial phase. Coventry council said that office demand was stemming from professional services, banking services and blue-chip energy companies, which are “interested in the notion of a second Midlands HQ outside Birmingham”.
However, speculative development is not yet on the cards.
Ian Stringer, director at GVA, which is advising Friargate Coventry, said: “As things currently stand we’d need to have completed deals on between 40,000 and 50,000 sq ft to consider speculative forward funding [of the next 100,000 sq ft building]. Friargate will be the Brindleyplace of Coventry over the next decade. There’s no competition for it.”
Work on the council’s new headquarters will start in June 2014 with completion in 2016. Work will also start on site this spring on road infrastructure remodelling and a new bridge, all of which is due for completion by June 2015, when a new pedestrian route to the railway station, around which the scheme is modelled, will open.
lisa.pilkington@estatesgazette.com
