Birchwood Park for sale

Developer MEPC is bringing the 1.2m sq ft Birchwood Park in Warrington to market, as part of a £400m sell off of three UK business parks.

Birchwood Park is home to 150 companies across a 123-acre site. There are over 5,000 people employed there from a mix of large blue chip organisations and new start-ups.

MEPC purchased the 72-acre site from UKAEA in 1998, and began an extensive development of the park which included the construction of offices Cavendish Place and Bridgewater Place, a Ramada hotel, several industrial units and the refurbishment of Thomson House, Darwin House, The Centre and Chadwick House.

JLL has been appointed to market the parks, which comprise Birchwood Park, Chineham Park in Basingstoke, and Hillington Park in Glasgow. They total 4m sq ft of mixed-use space and are let to 510 tenants.

The collective asking price is £400m.

MEPC is owned by Hermes Real Estate.

Chris Taylor, chairman of MEPC and chief executive of Hermes Real Estate confirmed that it is looking to recycle capital from assets it has owned and successfully managed with MEPC for many years. He said: "MEPC will focus on its remaining core assets and will continue to look for new development led opportunities, capitalising upon its proven ability to anticipate future occupational requirements, like its recent acquisition of Silverstone.

"The highly successful MEPC asset management platform, which is led by chief executive, James Dipple, could be utilised by the successful purchaser to manage the parks which combined are home to over 510 tenants."