Rochdale retail complex offered up at bargain price
Martin Property Group is auctioning off the 284,000 sq ft Exchange Shopping Centre with a guide price of £3.5m just a year after buying it.
The Rochdale shopping centre, which generates gross rent of £1.8m a year, will be auctioned off by Allsop next month.
A sale at guide price would reflect a gross initial yield of more than 51%, according to sales particulars.
Units within the scheme are let to the likes of Costa, Poundland, Iceland, Holland & Barrett, Greggs, and Home Bargains.
In total, the site spans almost six acres at the heart of Rochdale town centre and has significant redevelopment potential.
A feasibility study by DLG Architects in 2021 outlined how the retail complex might be repositioned.
DLG put forward several alternatives including one that would have seen 50% of Exchange redeveloped into residential.
HCSSC Properties, a vehicle of Northern Ireland-based Martin Property Group, acquired Exchange Shopping Centre as part of a 1.2m sq ft portfolio acquisition last year.
Clarendon Shopping Centre in Hyde, Ankerside Shopping Centre in Tamworth, Four Seasons Shopping Centre in Mansfield, Westside Plaza in Edinburgh, and Angel Place Shopping Centre in Bridgwater were the other complexes MPG bought from Stichting Mars Pensioenfonds.
MPG also owns the 500,000 sq ft Fishergate in Preston, having acquired it for £8m in 2021.
As well as Exchange, MPG has put the 70,000 sq ft Glovers Walk in Yeovil up for sale with a guide price of £1.75m.
Martin Property Group was contacted for comment.
If the low price isn’t just to whip up interest, it would seem to make most sense for Rochdale Council to buy it to clear the site for something else. Otherwise risk is that outside speculators at the “value” end of the market sit on it, or turn it into something that leaves a dead space in the middle of town.
By Anonymous
Amazing opportunity to selectively demolish parts of the site making parking for Rochdale Yown Hall etc easier & finally reopen Toad Lane where the coop started. Lots of potential
By Anonymous
If the council was to purchase the site and redevelop it as housing, it could also move the current retailers to the Riverside where they could and onto Yorkshire Street or the Esplanade.
Rochdale doesn’t need 3 Shoppings centres. The only issue would be the impact on parking and the Solicitors, who could easily move to another location.
Shame as JD Gyms have just invested in refurbishment at the Exchange location, but I don’t care much for JD sports due to their treatment of the workers at the warehouse (Kingsway and previously Pilsworth) for decades.
By Optional
If Rochdale Council bought this and the Wheatsheaf, they’d have a lot to work with in terms of redevelopment.
By Anonymous
Wow that amazing, well done. Hope it keep up and gives us new places to shop
By Diane O shea
Happen the Council should buy it, keep the shops already there, develop sections for affordable living, oh , and what about an actual market with affordable rents for stallholders?
By Anonymous
If yet another set of chimney sweeps and wheel – tappers local councilors have an inclination to purchase this failed retail centre, it is obvious that they will be as successful as Sefton (Strand centre), St: Helens, and Wirral (Birkenhead)!…!
Today Nottingham City Council has declared “Bankruptcy”. Liverpool City Council is expressing financial problems.
If a commercial property owner is selling after a year, obviously there are major problems. Rochdale was in the newspapers recently as a result of a report of finance problems.
By Anonymous
Rochdale as a town centre is dead why not just admit it and stop throwing OUR money down that open drain
By Alan Godson