Family run Northern Ireland-based property firm Martin Property Group is poised to spend at least £100m of capital on buying up UK shopping centres during 2023.
The company has just bought the iconic Browns of Chester building (pictured) – formerly home to Debenhams – from British Land in the latest in a string of acquisitions in the historic city as it ramps up its exposure to retail and leisure across the UK.
The company owns more than 100 assets across Ireland and the UK and has a pipeline with a gross development value of around £750m.
The 150,000 sq ft Browns building fronts Chester’s main shopping street, Eastgate Street, and adjoins the 211,845 sq ft Grosvenor Shopping Centre, which Martin Property Group acquired earlier this year. It also bought the nearby Newgate Street multi-storey car park and Jurys Inn Hotel Leonardo. The shopping centre has relatively low vacancy at around 20%, including a former Top Shop store.
Director Gary Martin told EG: “It is not that we think the whole market is wrong about retail – there are challenges for the economy and the high street – but we believe in town centres, and these shopping centres occupy huge swathes of ground. It is very unusual to be able to acquire such significant land holdings at a price point that really allows you to do things. There is a huge opportunity and need.”
He adds: “We like ‘messy’. We don’t mind getting our hands dirty to fix problems that others don’t want to solve.”
The business also likes to move quickly, drawing on its in-house expertise to assess risk quickly and typically complete within five days of receiving heads of terms. The focus will be on buying with cash over the coming months, with a view to refinancing as and when debt becomes more available.
In Chester, the vacant Browns building had been on the market with a £4m-plus price tag since Debenhams closed its doors in May 2021. Grade I listed, it incorporates part of the famous Chester Rows and contains ornate features such as glass-domed roofs, elaborate plasterwork and the Crypt Chambers. Martin says the premises offered the potential to create Chester’s own version of London’s Burlington Arcade.
However, his initial focus – here as elsewhere – is on meeting with local stakeholders. “We need to understand the history of what has been happening. Being aligned with local stakeholders is the most important part of the jigsaw,” he says.
Adopting “listening mode” is the starting point across the firm’s investments. In the summer it bought six UK shopping centres in a multi-million-pound deal with Dutch pension fund Stichting Mars Pensioenfonds. The centres span 1.2m sq ft of retail space across Westside Shopping Centre in Edinburgh, Clarendon Shopping Centre in Hyde, Exchange Shopping Centre in Rochdale, Four Seasons Shopping Centre in Mansfield, Ankerside Shopping Centre in Tamworth and Angel Place Shopping Centre in Somerset.
The other key to addressing the unique challenges and dynamics of each location, Martin says, is to draw on the group’s in-house expertise. “We have 12 in-house architects, a construction business, an asset management business and trading businesses of our own,” he says. “We believe we can bring these skill sets to the table.”
Those trading businesses include a hair and beauty company, a serviced office operator and a new leisure business which the group has recently formed to offer activities such as soft play and bowling.
“Because we are not a huge business, we are able to be nimble where otherwise you might struggle to bring in operators,” Martin says. “Some of these things aren’t about driving profit. They’re about driving footfall.”
Allsop acted for British Land on the sale of Browns.
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