MIPIM | Evergreen loans secured for Citylabs 2.0
Manchester Science Partnerships has been awarded an £18.5m loan from across two Evergreen funds, to develop Citylabs 2.0 on Manchester’s Oxford Road Corridor.
Building on the success of the Citylabs 1.0 biomedical centre, completed in 2014, Citylabs 2.0 is a 92,000 sq ft laboratory and office facility. It is being developed for Manchester Science Partnerships by Bruntwood, its majority shareholder, and is a joint venture partnership with Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust.
The development, alongside next phase Citylabs 3.0, is part of a £60m expansion of the clinical-academic campus on Oxford Road, and will provide laboratories for health and medical technology businesses, focusing on creating a UK hub for rapid development innovations in predictive and preventative medicine.
The funding includes £12.5m from Evergreen 2, the first loan to be made from the new £45m fund which is supported by the 2014-20 European Regional Development Fund. The rest was provided by the original North West Evergreen Fund, and will be used to finance construction costs, professional fees and expenses of Citylabs 2.0. The deal was announced during a presentation on the evolution of the Citylabs campus at MIPIM, the international real estate event in Cannes.
Like the previous North West Evergreen Fund, Evergreen 2 is managed by CBRE’s investment advisory team, part of CBRE Capital Advisors, and provides debt funding for commercial property and regeneration projects in Greater Manchester, with a particular focus on low carbon projects.
Tom Renn, managing director of Manchester Science Partnerships, said: “At Citylabs 2.0 we are committed to creating a world-leading hub for biomedical innovation and discovery and this funding from Evergreen 2 means we can soon begin construction work on the first stage of our plan to expand the campus in partnership with MFT.
“The success of Citylabs 1.0 has underlined the strong demand from global biomedical and precision medicine companies to locate and grow in Greater Manchester. The city region’s £6bn devolved healthcare budget, its world class universities, skilled talent pool and strong track record of academic, clinical and commercial partnerships has made us a gateway for healthcare entrepreneurs, which we are looking to support with this development.”
The first North West Evergreen Fund of £60m has provided over £115m of debt finance to developments, including Allied London’s St John’s scheme and Peel’s MediaCityUK in Salford, recycling and reinvesting its capital and supporting developments with a combined value of over £1bn.
