Landid builds business beyond Brockton

After engineering a £285m exit from its South East offices joint venture with Brockton Capital, Landid is now busy plotting its next chapter. Having sold out to the highly acquisitive Spelthorne Council, next year the developer will start searching for capital partners for a new strategy, which could include a concept for vacant department stores. In addition to creating a new development pipeline, Landid is also looking to grow its newly established property management business, having been appointed as property manager of three of the buildings it constructed with Brockton. For now, though, the developer – which helped transform Leavesden and create the Harry Potter Studio tour with Warner Bros – is working up proposals for office redevelopment project Tower Bridge Court (pictured), SE1, which it acquired earlier this year with Fore Partnership. The success of its office jv with Brockton was built on the idea of developing the trendy offices that the next generation of office workers and the burgeoning tech sector along the Western Corridor wanted – and the council was not the only investor that wanted a slice of Landid’s success. “All this year we had had regular approaches from across the globe on the assets,” says development director James Silver. “Putting the right quality building in the right location – even if it’s a place with some negative connotations – means people want it. Being next to a transport node is becoming more and more important.” But the real benefit of the sale to Spelthorne Council is that Landid has been retained to manage the buildings, marking the beginning of a new business stream for the company. “It’s a nice piece of work for us. By running the buildings in a certain way, our hope is to show that the tenants will stay for longer. We want to prove the model works,” James says. “It’s a real springboard for us with the portfolio we have within the Thames Valley and there should be more for us to do – hopefully, spreading out nationally as well.” Co-founder Trevor Silver adds: “We hope to prove it’s a more valuable and current way of running a building. “The friction over a change of tenant is massive in financial terms and uncertainty. It’s so much easier to have a happy tenant that just wants to stay – and the tenant in turn becomes an ambassador for our brand.” Future pipelines and concepts Landid, though, is not turning its back on development. The team aims to start fundraising early next year for its next pipeline of work. And both Trevor and James refuse to rule out working with Brockton Capital in the future, after having such “a great working relationship”. But for the moment the two companies’ paths are diverging. “Off the back of stellar returns with Brockton for their investors, the whole world is here to talk to us,” James says. “So the hope is to find either a group of people to create a fund for us or an investor that says ‘here is the strategy for the next four or five years’, because the purchasing power of strategic relationships has really stood us in good stead.” Trevor adds: “We have an idea for a product we think would work in an empty department store, so we are going to have a go at it.” This could be quite a timely thing for landlords as the big department stores struggle to adapt to the changing retail market. The fallout from Mike Ashley’s takeover of House of Fraser is still to be seen; Debenhams is battling to stave off its financial troubles; and even the John Lewis Partnership is showing it is not immune, after reporting a huge slump in profits for the first half of its current financial year. The firm will also head out to the UK’s other regions if opportunity presents itself – and it could have a project in Milan, Italy, on the horizon. Even so, London is still the big focus for the firm. “The hope is we can do more around London’s fringe and the odd central London project,” James says. To the Fore The remainder of this year, though, is being taken up with readying Landid’s project by Tower Bridge, in partnership with Fore. The scheme should go in for planning later this year, with the aim of creating a lot more space than the current 68,000 sq ft provided by the existing building. Once again the plan will be to carry out a comprehensive refurbishment, taking the building back to the frame before bringing in that Landid “pixie dust” that was sprinkled along the Western Corridor, in addition to attempting to make the property CO2-neutral – and providing the interior with the cleanest air possible. The firm takes on vacant possession of the property in April next year. It is planning to build the scheme speculatively in a period when development and the office pipeline is dwindling to almost nothing in four years’ time, as Brexit uncertainty continues to make the industry very cautious. As Trevor explains: “Now is the time to be doing projects like Tower Bridge.” Main image © Jon Paul Ladd To send feedback, e-mail louise.dransfield@egi.co.uk or tweet @DransfieldL or @estatesgazette