GVA to sell £46m Manchester Royal Exchange
Prupim has appointed GVA to manage the sale of Manchester's Royal Exchange building between Cross Street and St Ann's Square.
Its location on a strategic island site extends to 1.7 acres and provides 280,000 sq ft of mixed-use accommodation.
The building is being sold for only the second time since it was established in 1729.
Mark Rawstron, capital markets director at GVA, said: "The Royal Exchange is historically and architecturally one of Manchester's most important buildings. It sits at the heart of the City's prime retail core and is one of the City's most significant sales of recent years.
"We expect high levels of interest from domestic and international investors and we are looking forward to selling this on to a purchaser who can really exploit the full potential and enhance the value of this wonderful building."
Originally a site for cotton merchants to trade, the exchange boasted 11,000 members at its peak in the 1920s. At the time there were 130m cotton spindles in the world and members of the exchange controlled 60m of them. In 1921 the exchange represented the largest commercial building in the world.
It was bought by The Prudential Assurance Company Limited on 31 December 1968 and is today home to the Royal Exchange Theatre Company as well as retailers and office users.
The building has frontages to Market Street, Cross Street, Exchange Street Street and Old Bank Street and is adjacent to Marks & Spencer, Arndale Centre and New Cathedral Street.
Retail occupiers include Molton Brown, Moss Bros, Starbucks, Accessorize and Whittard and Swarovski. The building includes The Royal Exchange Arcade, a specialist arcade with a focus on high-end jewellery, which Quintain Estates & Development currently holds a long lease on.
The annual rent roll is just over £3m and offers are invited in excess of £45,860,000.
A purchase at this level would reflect an initial yield of 6.25% and a reversionary yield of 10.76% adopting purchaser's costs of 5.8%.
All images courtesy of McCoy Wynne.
