InfraRed Capital Partners has confirmed that it has exchanged contracts to acquire the Mill Gate shopping centre in Bury, Greater Manchester, from Scottish Widows Investment Partnership for £52m.
Mill Gate comprises more than 400,000 sq ft of covered lettable space across 140 shops, along with one of the main car parks in the town. Tenants include BHS, Boots, New Look, Poundland, Body Shop, Waterstones, Poundworld and Santander.
InfraRed has appointed Hark Group as asset manager and Munroe K Asset Management as property manager.
InfraRed re-entered the UK shopping centre market in 2011 after an absence of five years and has since acquired six shopping centres for a total consideration of more than £350m. InfraRed has invested more than £50m of combined capital expenditure budget across its six UK shopping centres.
SWIP said the sale, first revealed by EGi, allows its co-investing funds to follow individual mandates going forward.
Christopher Huxtable, fund manager at InfraRed, said: “We are excited about this latest addition to our growing UK shopping centre portfolio. This investment follows our strategy of acquiring dominant town centre assets, in top 100 UK retail destinations that benefit from a combination of high footfall, affordable rents and high potential for value addition. With an annual footfall of nearly 13m, the scheme dominates the town centre and provides the only covered retail environment in the vicinity. We will make further investment into the asset which will benefit tenants and customers at Mill Gate and indeed the town of Bury overall.”
Barker Proudlove and Lunson Mitchenall acted for InfraRed; Cushman and Wakefield represented SWIP.
