Peel’s Wirral Waters office starts on site

Contractor GMI Construction has started building the 34,000 sq ft office block on Liverpool’s Tower Road South, a scheme now renamed ‘Hythe’ after the Old English for ‘a landing place or small harbour for ships or boats’.

The project was previously called No 1 Tower Road South and is part of the regeneration of the Four Bridges neighbourhood at Wirral Waters.

Hythe, the first speculative office development in Birkenhead for a decade, according to its developer Peel L&P, is to deliver flexible, quality office space for local businesses.

The three-storey building has been designed by Glenn Howells Architects and will have a BREEAM ‘excellent’ rating for its green credentials. Construction work is expected to complete next year, and to run alongside the current streetscaping works taking place on Tower Road South, which are due to complete in March.

The £7.7m office scheme is being funded by Peel L&P and an £8.5m investment from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and the Merseyside Pension Fund, which will also help to deliver Peel L&P’s 70,000 sq ft multi-unit manufacturing and logistics project at MEA Park in Wirral Waters at the same time.

Steve Rotheram, Metro Mayor for the Liverpool City Region, said: “We’ve invested in the Wirral Waters site to ensure that we’re able to keep offering outstanding facilities as a catalyst to attract new businesses and jobs to the area.

“Not only will these new facilities be some of the most advanced office space in the region, they will also be some of the greenest and most sustainable. We will continue our investment programme to ensure our region has the best opportunity to emerge from Brexit and Covid-19.”

James Whittaker, executive development director at Peel L&P, added: “We are very excited to have broken ground on another project at Wirral Waters. Hythe will offer companies a sustainable, green and well-connected place to do business, right in the heart of the UK’s biggest regeneration project, Wirral Waters.”