A North-East council has pledged more than £4m to help prepare an 82-acres site for one of the region’s biggest industrial estates.
Highbridge Properties — the owners of Newcastle’s Cobalt Park, the UK’s largest office park — last year signed a collaboration agreement with North Tyneside Council to create Indigo Park, at Sandy Lane, close to the A1 at Gosforth Park.
The developer claims its new scheme will accommodate in excess of 1.5-million sq ft of manufacturing and distribution space in an area north of Newcastle and previously un-served by a logistics hub of any size. When fully let Indigo Park would be worth around £100m and provide work for more than 1,000 people.
North Tyneside Council is now set to spend £4.32m over the next two years building a second entrance to the site, a new traffic control system at Sandy Lane, widening the existing road leading to the park and making additional nearby road and boundary improvements.
Highbridge says Indigo Park has the potential for 10 large units, ranging from 41,900 to 509,900 sq ft. “But,” adds director Adrian Hill, “there is potential to build bespoke units up to 1.5-million sq ft, paving the way for a major investor to take on the entire site.”
Hill said the scheme would be demand led. “We are talking to three parties and who knows if they will go ahead, but if they do they will take up a significant chunk of the site.
“We are delighted the scheme is moving forward. Existing stock and existing buildings of this scale are disappearing across the region and we to be building to exact requirements,” he added. “One of the great things about Indigo is that it’s ready to go. We can build immediately — and far quicker than anyone else.”
The scheme is already being heavily marketed to potential tenants through property consultants ES Group and commercial agents at Knight Frank. Both confirm they are talking to a number of potential tenants.
Neil Osborne is an ES Group director at its Newcastle office. “It’s fair to say that we have had enquiries from manufacturing companies, distributions companies and others across a whole range of businesses who have been struggling to find accommodation because there is a dearth of large sheds in the area,” he commented.
Highbridge Properties was formed in 1988 as a business park developer. Since then the London-headquartered specialist has completed a raft of schemes in the North-East including Newcastle Business Park and industrial estates at Peterlee and Sunderland.
Its 250-acre flagship development, Cobalt Park, is the UK’s largest office park encompassing more than two-million sq ft of offices and amenity development employing 10,500 people. Occupiers include Santander, Orange, Hewlett Packard, Proctor & Gamble, Newcastle Business Society and North Tyneside Council.
