The EG Interview: Driving development at Bicester Motion

Sarah-Jane Curtis is revving up plans for a major new development in Oxfordshire. She brings Samantha McClary up to speed on real estate’s best-kept secret, Bicester Motion. Unless you’re really into cars, when you hear or see the word Bicester you probably think of luxury brands at discount prices and a shopping park teeming with bargain hunters. But there is another development in Oxfordshire that is showcasing the power of community in building a resilient real estate investment and it has some big plans for expansion. Welcome to Bicester Motion. Bicester Motion is a 444-acre former RAF base with a vision to become a hub for the past, present and future of mobility. The site is run by a team including former Grosvenor and CapCo director Sarah-Jane Curtis. Curtis joined Bicester Motion in 2020 from Value Retail, where she was business director for that better-known local development, Bicester Village. Chief operating officer Curtis can barely contain her excitement about Bicester Motion and the plans it has to expand into four distinct quarters. She is far from a petrolhead, but when it comes to talking about what the site is all about and how she has taken lessons learnt from estate management at both Grosvenor and Covent Garden-owner CapCo into the vision, she is 100mph. Bicester Motion is divided into four distinct areas: a heritage quarter, an experience quarter, an innovation quarter and a wilderness quarter. The four quarters all offer something a little different for anyone who is, or doesn’t yet know they are, interested in mobility. The heritage quarter is the most established part of the site and comprises the old RAF buildings. It is home to some 60 automotive businesses, most of which, says Curtis, are new to Oxfordshire and Bicester. There are more than 400 people working on the site for businesses that include the Morgan Motor Company, Kingsbury Racing Shop and the Little Car Company. Polestar, the manufacturer of high-performance electric cars, has also recently established its UK head office and a customer test drive hub at the site, with NEOM McLaren Electric Racing opting for an HQ at the site as well, instead of consolidating at the McLaren technical centre in Woking, Surrey. A 1m sq ft masterplan Beyond the heritage quarter, plans are afoot to create a major destination for Oxfordshire’s mobility enthusiasts through a £140m, 1m sq ft masterplan. The proposed experience quarter already has planning permission and will see the development of eight permanent buildings, private test tracks, off-road routes and an airfield, all established to provide experiences and opportunities for bike, car and aviation manufacturers. Curtis says this is the quarter where the business starts to play more in the B2C market, rather than the B2B nature of the heritage quarter. “This will be a place that you can come to and try out different types of vehicles, scooters or drones,” she says. “There will be an element of sales, there will be some leisure, and in many ways it will complement the manufacturing and R&D businesses on the other side of the site in the innovation quarter.” Work on the innovation quarter, which comprises around 210,000 sq ft of “classy” light industrial space, has already begun. It will be home to the future of mobility, says Curtis, who has recently instructed Bidwells to find tenants for the site. Investing in future technologies “We are looking at the advanced manufacturing sector, really focused around mobility,” says Curtis of the occupiers she will be aiming to bring to the quarter. “And in this area – as you can appreciate, being Motorsport Valley, in the heart of the country with a lot of skilled labour around us, easy access and close to Oxford University and the spin-outs coming from there – we are actually a very strong location for these companies when they are coming through to series B investment.” Both Polestar and McLaren took space at Bicester Motion with one eye on the forthcoming innovation and experience quarters. The concept is attracting other occupiers too, including Zero Petroleum, a business creating synthetic fuels. The final slice of the 444-acre project will see an 88-acre quarry turned into something completely different – the wilderness quarter. “In the quarry you could be absolutely anywhere,” says Curtis. “It is absolutely beautiful. The wildlife is amazing, and it has not been touched for 20 years. So, other than the brambles taking over – and we have quite a challenge to remove them and keep the sensitive ecology – it is just a beautiful, untouched site that is just an hour and 10 minutes from London.” Bicester Motion’s vision for the quarry, which has three lakes, is to see it transformed into a 35-acre public park with a lakeside development of between 60 and 85 lodges and miles of tracks for walking. The lodges will be largely second homes, although Curtis says Bicester Motion will create an operational company to take back the properties and rent them for owners if required. Consent is already in place for a 340-bedroom hotel within the site, but the firm has delayed construction until it gets a better sense of how the wilderness quarter will operate. More than a business park Curtis describes Bicester Motion as a business park, but it is clear when talking to her that it is so much more than just its description. It is a community. It is a complete ecosystem for the mobility sector. Both Curtis and asset management and leasing manager Mike Doran talk passionately about the Heritage Skills Academy and a new charity the firm has set up called Starter Motor, both of which help keep heritage motoring alive, teaching kids about classic car maintenance. “There is a real sense of community and investing at grassroots level,” says Doran. And that community spirit has helped keep Bicester Motion full in its 10 years of operation. Curtis says they have had only two businesses leave over that period, and in the past 12 to 18 months alone some 14 of the specialist firms on the site have renewed their tenancies. “They come in on quite short leases because most of them are small businesses, anything of up to three years, possibly with annual breaks, but they all renew early,” says Curtis. “They are big characters and we are constantly asking them how they are getting on and working with them in terms of space requirements, because as their business grows their space needs grow. But that’s the way we work. They know where we are. We know where they are. We are always around the site.” She adds with a knowing smile: “We also have a brewery on a Friday night, so everyone comes out and has a drink before they go home. You interrelate with them a lot.” Curtis credits the lessons learnt managing estates at Grosvenor and CapCo with the success of the heritage quarter. “It’s all about talking and providing flexibility,” she says. “But also, we are very lucky. This is a really nice environment to work in. It is not like typical business parks, which have their strengths, but this is a very green environment with a number of buildings set at different angles rather than regimented. And with a brewery, a gin place, a food truck, it becomes a community rather than just a place.” Driving change in development Cool cars, exciting new technologies, green and wild spaces and a brewery – Bicester Motion sounds like the type of work environment we are all after in the new normal. So why is it so unheard of? “Bicester Motion’s profile in the classic car world is really strong,” says Curtis. “Everyone who owns a classic car or is interested in cars will know Bicester Motion or Bicester Heritage. From a property perspective, we played it down a bit. Not intentionally. We’ve just got on with doing the building, getting the people on site, thinking that our achievements will speak for themselves.” She adds: “It’s probably remiss of me not to bang on about it a bit more in the sector, but we have built awareness through the market we are serving, which is an occupational market rather than the property market. Real estate is important, but it’s the businesses we support and what we are trying to do for that industry that is effectively more important.” It is a fair point, and perhaps an approach that more property owners should take. Think about the customer, the community and the industry you are trying to support, rather than the industry you are in. “If we can become exemplars, if we can create this vision within the next 10-15 years, if we can open it up to people who perhaps wouldn’t be interested in just the car bit, if we can create somewhere people can come and have a good look around, feel very comfortable and also generate a lot of economic benefit to the county and bring new businesses to the site,” says Curtis, “then I think that’s a very big tick as to what success looks like.” So, does she plan to bring that potential recipe for success to other places around the UK? “There are a couple of people out there who like what we do and are imitating it,” she says, “but I think we’ve got enough on our plate to focus on right now.” To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@eg.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @EGPropertyNews Portrait by Bicester Motion/Before images by Bicester Heritage/After images by Bicester Motion/Car image by Mathieu Bonnevie