Some 20 months after appointing JLL to try again to find a development partner for a “King’s Cross of the North”, Homes England and Network Rail are close to making a decision.
The pair is understood to be poised to appoint McLaren Property as development partner for the multi-billion-pound York Central, a 111-acre development site around the city’s railway station.
Network Rail said it was still in the “process of selecting a development partner”.
“As part of the public procurement exercise, which is required given the size and scale of York Central, a number of organisations submitted bids and the process is ongoing ahead of a development partner being announced,” said a spokesperson.
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.
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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