The City One development site in Leeds — subject to a lengthy legal wrangle over the building of Leeds Arena — has been acquired by Caddick Developments.
London and Wetherby-based Caddick reportedly paid £10m to retrieve the 9.5-acre site from administration, beating several rival investors, and hopefully bringing an end to years of uncertainty over the city centre plot.
In 2008 the Sweet Street site was shortlisted by Leeds City Council as a location for its £60m Leeds Arena. The authority later abruptly ended a developer competition and announced it was pressing ahead with its own scheme at Claypit Lane.
Montpellier Estates, which owned and had invested heavily in the City One land, immediately launched a High Court claim to claw back £43.5m it has already spent on the scheme, but this was rejected in a 2013 judgement.
Receivers were then appointed for a portfolio of Montepellier Estates’ properties owned by Jan Fletcher and Leeds council issued a bankruptcy order against the Yorkshire businesswoman who was given four weeks to pay interim legal costs. The council dropped its bankruptcy claim, however, after Fletcher finally paid around £2m toward the authority’s legal bill.
An initial report by liquidators Begbies Traynor claimed that asset realisations from the sale of Montpellier’s estate were expected to bring in £15.3m, but not enough to discharge its £29m debt. The liquidator’s latest report, compiled in September, said a “substantial sum” had been raised through sales with two properties “still to be realised” — one of those was the City One site.
Ahead of the Caddick deal, the Holbeck site already carried 2012 planning consent for a £500m mixed-use scheme, including one-million sq ft of Grade A offices, a 25-storey residential tower, a 230-bed hotel and a 100,000 sq ft casino. The new owner has hinted it will seek permission to replace the leisure element with private rented flats.
Caddick has completed a wide spectrum of UK developments, ranging from large-scale industrial and office schemes to major mixed-use urban regeneration projects and city-centre retail developments. The Caddick Group, and its associated interests, own various cross-sector investments with its £500m portfolio managed in-house by Park Square Property Management.
The company’s latest acquisition comes less than a month after the appointment of Simon Gardner as Caddick’s new development project manager.
