After continually bumping into each other at local authorities around the country, a little over a year ago Manchester-based developer Bruntwood and investment giant Legal & General decided it would probably make more sense if they teamed up and went into meetings together with the UK’s councils.
It’s not entirely how the country’s largest science and technology partnership was born, but almost.
“We often found, as we were going into a meeting with the local authority, they were leaving the meeting,” says Legal & General Capital’s director of regeneration Rachel Dickie. “In a way, the partnership came about slightly organically because we were going in and saying: ‘We’ve got money and we can see the potential in the city and we want to invest’ and Bruntwood was there saying: ‘We’ve got this really good idea and we’ve got track record in Manchester and we can do that here too.’ But in order to grow and reach the potential they needed, they needed a financial partner. And that’s where we came in.”
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After continually bumping into each other at local authorities around the country, a little over a year ago Manchester-based developer Bruntwood and investment giant Legal & General decided it would probably make more sense if they teamed up and went into meetings together with the UK’s councils.
It’s not entirely how the country’s largest science and technology partnership was born, but almost.
“We often found, as we were going into a meeting with the local authority, they were leaving the meeting,” says Legal & General Capital’s director of regeneration Rachel Dickie. “In a way, the partnership came about slightly organically because we were going in and saying: ‘We’ve got money and we can see the potential in the city and we want to invest’ and Bruntwood was there saying: ‘We’ve got this really good idea and we’ve got track record in Manchester and we can do that here too.’ But in order to grow and reach the potential they needed, they needed a financial partner. And that’s where we came in.”
The Bruntwood/L&G Capital scitech joint venture was officially launched in October 2018. The 50:50 joint venture saw the two partners invest £360m of capital, property and intellectual assets into a new company, Bruntwood SciTech.
On launch the business had some 1.3m sq ft of assets but through the jv it plans to grow that asset base to 6.2m sq ft over the next 10 years, creating a £1.8bn portfolio.
It’s a big ambition, but one that Dickie says completely chimes with the overall mission of the L&G business.
“We’re looking to find areas of the UK economy that have been starved of investment, – and that’s either from the banks retrenching or lack of government funding – and looking at where we can deploy our own balance sheet, and the funds we have under management, to places where we can not only make a financial return but have a social and economic impact on the UK,” says Dickie.
Through the Bruntwood SciTech business, L&G Capital hopes to create 20,000 new jobs over the next decade.
“The mission of our business is to improve the lives of our customers,” adds Dickie. “There are 10m of them in the UK and they are spread all over the place: in towns and cities and rural areas. It is a responsibility we take incredibly seriously and part of the driver behind setting up Legal & General Capital was to use our balance sheet to unlock the enormous amount of money that’s out there and to deploy it to the projects that desperately need it.”
And the science and technology sector fit perfectly with that mission: a growth area for the UK that could provide tens of thousands of jobs for people and regenerate many of the country’s regional cities.
Bruntwood SciTech’s portfolio is already home to more than 500 science and technology businesses and is centred around projects in key regional cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds. The jv also includes the internationally recognised Alderley Park campus in Cheshire.
In Manchester, Bruntwood has built up an innovation district around the Oxford Road corridor, a development that started with Manchester Science Park back in 2012, then got buy-in from Manchester University, Manchester Metropolitan and the hospital.
From that the Citylabs concept was born. Citylabs brings together the NHS and scientific and academic communities to develop and deliver new health products and technologies. The first Citylabs project is fully operational, while Citylabs 2.0 is under development and a Citylabs 3.0 in the works.
A further development within the Oxford Road corridor is also being brought forward to provide space for the scitech sector and other businesses. Circle Square will provide 1.2m sq ft of commercial space, 1,700 homes and 100,000 sq ft of shops and restaurants across three phases.
In Birmingham, the jv is preparing to go in for planning for 120,000 sq ft of new space next to Innovation Birmingham, while in Leeds, take-up in its tech hub has been strong.
“And that’s before you even get on to Alderley Park,” says Dickie, “which really is a one-off.”
[caption id="attachment_1004289" align="aligncenter" width="847"] Alderley Park[/caption]
Alderley Park is the former headquarters of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. The park provides 1.2m sq ft of hi-tech space and is now home to more than 200 businesses. Instead of becoming an abandoned wasteland when AstraZeneca announced its intention to move to Cambridge in 2012, the park has become part of the local area, with residential and public space on this once high-security site.
“It comes down to there being a business reason for doing this, but also a responsibility that we have an opportunity to create something amazing here. A legacy that will keep Alderley Park relevant in a new era,” says Dickie. “One of the key parts of our strategy is to open it up and make people aware of the history of the place.”
While Alderley Park and the rest of the current scitech portfolio offers plenty of work to be getting on with, the partnership has big ambitions for the Bruntwood SciTech business.
“The whole driver behind this partnership is to create a network of innovation districts across the UK and to facilitate the movement of businesses and ideas around that network…The ultimate ambition is that we have a UK-wide presence and are working with cities on what their sector specialism is and how we can provide the space to help,” says Dickie.
L&G Capital is looking to how it can extend the network in places where it already has some presence but can turbo-charge the scitech sector.
The whole driver behind this partnership is to create a network of innovation districts across the UK and to facilitate the movement of businesses and ideas around that network
As well as the 120,000 sq ft of new space it wants to build alongside Innovation Birmingham, it is looking at what involvement it can have around the Birmingham Life Sciences Park, a £300m project to turn the derelict former Birmingham Battery and Metal Company site in Selly Oak into a major life-sciences hub.
In Newcastle, it is investigating how it can bring scitech into its Helix project, a jv with Newcastle City Council and Newcastle University, and what angles it should be exploring with the other cities it its working with, such as Bristol, Cambridge and Edinburgh.
And then there is a big opportunity in Oxford, where this summer L&G created a £4bn partnership with the university.
“Part of that partnership will involve bringing forward 1-2m sq ft of science space and we would absolutely expect that to do that as part of our SciTech partnership,” says Dickie.
“Adding Oxford to the network from an international perspective will be really important because as much as we are championing regional cities, from a global perspective there is still so much emphasis on the golden triangle and we need to embrace that, not compete against it.”
For Dickie, embracing that focus feeds directly back into the L&G mission of creating profit and improving lives.
To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette
