Rockspring Property Investment Managers has acquired Fairhill Shopping Centre for £45.6m. It is the trust’s fourteenth UK acquisition and its first asset in Northern Ireland.
Purchased on behalf of Rockspring’s UK Value 2 LP fund, the 295,000 sq ft retail complex is located north of Ballymena town centre, and 28 miles from Belfast. More than 95 per cent of the 49 retail units are currently let to national retailers such as M & S, Debenhams, Next, New Look, Top Shop, H & M and River Island.
The shopping centre, which also has a food court and parking for 900 cars, takes the aggregate asset value of UK Value 2 close to £400m.
“Fairhill Shopping Centre is a prime shopping centre with a strong national retailer base,” commented Richard Bains, a Rockspring partner and manager of the UK Value series of funds.
“As with the other shopping centre acquisitions we have made in Taunton, Aylesbury and Leeds, this transaction is in line with the fund’s strategy to source properties that will benefit from expert asset management and will, ultimately, provide long term income streams for our investors.
“This is Rockspring’s first acquisition in Northern Ireland, and we are excited to be working with Cordatus which has extensive experience working in this jurisdiction.”
Cordatus Real Estate — which will act as joint venture partners in the asset management of the Ballymena site — and DTZ McCombe Pierce acted for Rockspring on the transaction. CBRE acted for the vendor.
For Cordatus, director Mike Channing said: “We are delighted to be working with Rockspring on this important project. Fairhill offers a great opportunity for added value asset management and we look forward to working closely with Rockspring to realise the full potential of the centre.”
Fairhill Shopping Centre was placed on the market in August along with two other major retail assets that once belonged to Irish property developer Sam Morrison’s company Corbo: Altnagelvin Retail Park, in Strabane, and the Showgrounds in Omagh. Those properties have now been sold and at one time it was believed Corbo was refinancing to allow it to buy back Fairhill.
Ulster Bank sold around £50m in loans relating to Corbo last year to a consortium made up of Deutsche Bank, Burlington Loan Management, KW Real Estate in Ireland and KW Investment in Luxembourg. Those funders were influential in selling off the assets.
Rockspring’s UK Value 2 closed earlier this year after just eight months and securing £342m worth of equity from 11 investors — making it the fastest fundraise Rockspring has achieved in its 30 year history.
