Invesco and George Capital complete Fort Shopping Park buy
Invesco Real Estate and George Capital have completed the £84m acquisition of The Fort Shopping Park in Birmingham, from a consortium of institutional investors including Nuveen Real Estate, CBRE Global Investors, Aberdeen Standard Investments and M&G Real Estate.
The acquisition is the seventh for Invesco’s European Value-Add Fund II, a discretionary vehicle with €1.4bn (£1.2bn) of purchase capacity. The fund invests across all property sectors, with an emphasis on assets poised to benefit from post-Covid structural changes and recovery.
The Fort’s tenant line-up includes Primark, Next, Sports Direct, Superdrug, Boots, JD Sports and Wilko. Positioned on a 29-acre site, it is Birmingham’s dominant retail park and provides more than 300,000 sq ft of retail space.
Invesco Real Estate and George Capital have completed the £84m acquisition of The Fort Shopping Park in Birmingham, from a consortium of institutional investors including Nuveen Real Estate, CBRE Global Investors, Aberdeen Standard Investments and M&G Real Estate.
The acquisition is the seventh for Invesco’s European Value-Add Fund II, a discretionary vehicle with €1.4bn (£1.2bn) of purchase capacity. The fund invests across all property sectors, with an emphasis on assets poised to benefit from post-Covid structural changes and recovery.
The Fort’s tenant line-up includes Primark, Next, Sports Direct, Superdrug, Boots, JD Sports and Wilko. Positioned on a 29-acre site, it is Birmingham’s dominant retail park and provides more than 300,000 sq ft of retail space.
Miles Skinner, director – UK transactions at Invesco Real Estate, said the UK retail warehouse park market has “remained resilient despite the challenges of the last 18 months”.
Skinner said the retail park “offers excellent repositioning opportunities in conjunction with very strong underlying real estate fundamentals”.
He added: “The asset fits with our strategy to seek out well-located opportunities with value creation prospects, which will allow us to introduce diversification of occupier in a changing retail world and to implement enhanced ESG initiatives in order to drive performance for our investors.”
Ben Young, founder of George Capital, said: “As the wider retail market has evolved we identified, through detailed analysis, the relative strength and potential of the retail warehouse park sub-sector early on in its recovery.
“There are a number of opportunities for us to add value through active asset management of the existing retail units and to explore alternative uses, particularly in fulfilment and logistics, for part of the site.”
Cortex, Curson Sowerby and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson advised Invesco Real Estate and George Capital on the acquisition with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and Laurus Property Partners advising on the financing. Savills and CMS were mandated on the sale side.
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