A revolutionary 2m sq ft underground warehouse that could ease the city’s logistics shortfall and serve Heathrow is being planned in west London.
Plans have been submitted to Hounslow Council by Formal Investments as part of a project, Rectory Farm, near Cranford and Heston, that will include a 110-acre landscaped park.
The warehouse will sit beneath the park in a style similar to the car park beneath Hyde Park, SW1.
The site is 1.2 miles north-east of Heathrow, and bounded by The Parkway (A312) and the Bath Road dual carriageway link to the M4.
The completed nine-metre-high warehouse could be split into several units of at least 80,000 sq ft.
The land is classified as green belt and building above ground is restricted but gravel extraction is allowed. Rectory Farm has one of the largest gravel deposits in London and the spoil from the project would fill 700 Olympic-sized pools.
The development would be completed in phases using a construction method called sealed top-down construction, which is normally used in city centre developments and was used to build The Shard. Works would take place beneath a reinforced concrete slab, to be laid beforehand, with landscaping on top.
A plan for the scheme was submitted in 2013, but permission was refused owing to environmental concerns and the dust created by the works, which would cause problems for aircraft near Heathrow.
However, the new method is designed to minimise the noise and dust created by quarrying.
Bridget Outtrim, director at Savills, which is advising alongside CBRE, said: “We want to attract a large occupier that might not otherwise expect to locate in such a prime location and we will get lots of interest because of the scale.”
Rent would likely be less than prime rents in the nearby area – £15 per sq ft – given the unusual nature of the scheme.
If consented, work could begin in 2018 and complete in seven to 10 years.
Formal Investments, based in Cheltenham, is led by chairman Malcolm King and managing director Nicholas King. It specialises in investment and asset management and holds office, retail and logistics assets in London, Leeds, Cheltenham and Glasgow.
How the giant underground shed would be built
London’s insatiable demand for logistics
The west London industrial market has seen a significant reduction in the availability of suitable buildings and strong levels of take up.
The Hounslow market is dominated by small units with an average size of 10,000 sq ft. Around 50 occupiers are looking for units sized more than 50,000 sq ft in west London, according to Savills research, and only two vacant units in the Hounslow area are larger than 50,000 sq ft. The main occupiers are 3PLs and online retailers, which require space-efficient, well located buildings.
In the Hounslow area, six schemes are under construction in the vicinity of Rectory Farm, three of which were placed under offer before completion.
This demand is reflected by the national logistics market for units sized more than 100,000 sq ft. Supply is 67% down from 2009 levels and there are no buildings in the UK that provide more than 380,000 sq ft in a single unit.
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