Nigel Hugill’s and Robin Butler’s Urban & Civic is set to become a major player in the regeneration of Manchester after beating the competition for a pair of the city’s most high-profile development sites.
The duo – who directed the regeneration of Stratford, Greenwich Peninsula, Bankside and White City in London – have been chosen by Morgan Stanley to build out two sites from the Saturn portfolio.
Morgan Stanley is to split the three-strong portfolio sale, selecting local residential developer Renaker Build for the Owen Street development and London-based Urban & Civic for the Origin and Ramada sites.
Between them the purchasers are paying around £45m, underscoring the strong demand for central Manchester land (see Focus, p88). Together the sites have consent for a circa £450m development comprising 1,622 flats, three hotels and 400,000 sq ft of office-led space.
The deal for the sites represents Urban & Civic’s first major regeneration play in the North, following its reverse takeover of Terrace Hill in April. Hugill and Butler previously owned Crosby Homes, which undertook several large projects in Manchester, Cheshire and Yorkshire.
Urban & Civic has paid £25m for the Ramada Renaissance hotel in Deansgate, where the council had hoped for a major retail regeneration, and the Origin site in Piccadilly, the subject of a heated planning battle.
Renaker will pay £20m for the Owen Street site, consent for which includes a 50-storey residential tower that would be the tallest in the city.
Urban & Civic is now expected to revise Ramada’s and Origin’s consents for residential-led schemes, while Renaker will seek a mixed-use consent for the Owen Street site.
Hugill set up the developer with Robin Butler in 2009 with backing from US private-equity group GI Partners.
A source said: “Part of the logic of the Terrace Hill move was to take advantage of their regional network. Urban & Civic has been looking to work in the recovering regional economies for some time.”
EG revealed in August that JLL had been instructed to sell the sites, with the pricing meaning Morgan Stanley is likely to capture a significant profit on the Saturn loan portfolio.
The sites were once owned by Donal Mulryan’s West Properties. Mulryan worked with Morgan Stanley on its 2011 bid to buy the portfolio from Nama.
