November 23, 2020
Fiera Real Estate (“FRE UK”) has sold its final land interest at Aubrey Place, in central Milton Keynes. The sale marks the end of its work to enable a major regeneration of 1.8 acres of land which had previously laid vacant and sterilised for well over a decade, which, once completed, will have an end value approaching £100 million.
FRE UK acquired the freehold of the land from Homes England in 2017 and had since worked closely with various stakeholders to overcome a variety of development constraints. This included seeking a planning consent for a 294 unit Build-to-Rent (“BTR”) residential apartment scheme, a 44 unit apartment hotel and a 210 room hotel.
Invesco are currently funding the BTR block in collaboration with BTR specialist developer Packaged Living whilst Vastint are also on site constructing the 210 bedroom hotel, which will be operated under the Moxy brand. Fernbrook have now acquired the apartment hotel.
When complete, the BTR development, which includes two interlinked towers of 17 storeys above ground, connected by an 11 storey link, will comprise 294 units arranged as one, two and three-bedroom apartments. Additionally, the development will benefit from 83 car parking spaces, 294 cycle storage facilities, a single commercial unit of 2,500 sqm and 17,324 sqm of internal and external amenity space, ranging from ground floor reception and lounge, to roof terraces, parcel storage and two compact landscaped courtyards.
The BTR block is situated in a prime location within Milton Keynes’s central business and retail district, one of the fastest-growing and most productive regions in the UK, and is particularly centred around high-tech and service-based employment. Being located within the Oxford-Cambridge Innovation Corridor, Milton Keynes ranks as one of the top 10 cities in the UK for research and innovation. It hosts a number of high technology businesses as well as several FTSE 100 companies, start-ups and SMEs.
Steven Wright, Director at FRE UK commented “We are delighted to have enabled development to a site that has been blighted for over a decade. The investment to the area will be a material benefit to the Milton Keynes economy and will deliver much needed bed space to the central location”.
Knight Frank acted for FRE UK for the BTR, LSH for the hotel and Christie & Co for the apartment hotel sale.