Good morning,
Plans for a £250m transformation of London’s Royal Docks, which would add 12 acres of land and 760,000 sq ft of “floating modules”, have been, erm, floated. And a Formula One race track, naturally.
Real estate stock exchange IPSX will add a fourth listing, as preparations get under way for the float of the £230m M7 Box+ REIT warehouse portfolio. But eagle-eyed readers may have spotted that M7 in the new REIT’s title…
Almost £1bn will be earmarked for 12 investment zones in tomorrow’s Budget. It’s a bit of a comedown from Liz Truss’s plans for 200 or so, but every little helps!
And Taylor Wimpey is the latest housing developer to confirm it has signed Michael Gove’s remediation contract.
Harworth’s profit has more than halved to £44.5m, but it is “still on track to be a £1bn business”.
The masterplan for a 1m sq ft life science-led transformation of Manchester’s Upper Brook Street has gone to public consultation. The plan ties together developments by McLaren Property, Alliance, Moda Living and Kadans Science Partner.
And plans have been filed to transform a redundant shopping centre in the heart of Wigan into an 84,000 sq ft multi media centre (that’s a cinema to you and me).
Meaningful partnerships with the public sector have the power to transform cities, writes Shoosmiths real estate partner Patrick Duffy. But both developers and local authorities must enter into them with their eyes wide open.
Bruntwood SciTech’s Enterprise Wharf is set to become Birmingham’s first certified smart building.
John Lewis’s partners are putting together a bid to buy the golf course the partnership wants to sell.
And the government has been urged to relax laws governing Sunday trading hours in the West End and Knightsbridge in central London. How else can we compete with Milan and New York?
“London has little power over itself but is the seat of a highly centralised national government, world-leading capital markets and cultural and creative industries,” writes Opportunity London steering group chair Jenna Goldberg. But despite this “grand paradox baked into the middle”, she says, London hasn’t really lost its way. “When London succeeds, the rest of the country succeeds, and vice versa”.
And finally, If you are in the UK today, enjoy the drizzle. If you’re in Cannes today for the first day of MIPIM, enjoy the sunshine. And come and join us at the EG pavilion, at stand C20 by the main entrance.
We start the day with a 9am breakfast briefing on the value of being a B Corp, with ADP Architecture.
At 10am we kick off the first of our invest city focus sessions, in which representatives will pitch their visions for the future of their cities and regions.
At 11.30, our diversity spotlight session will see Real Estate Balance’s Sue Brown in conversation with Paddy Allen, head of operational capital markets at Colliers and chair of Pathways to Property.
After lunch there’s a 2pm panel asking what UK cities can learn from their international peers chaired by EG’s deputy editor Tim Burke, and at 4.15 news editor Pui Guan Man will sit down with Catherine Webster, chief executive at PfP Capital, for the first of the week’s EG Interview Live sessions.
And after all that comes our first drinks reception of the week, sponsored by Clyde & Co and Real Estate Balance.
More details of those sessions and the rest of the week’s agenda can be found here.
