Uncategorised

North East investment company Develop North PLC (Develop North) has announced proposals to provide increased access to real estate investment opportunities in the North East of England and significantly expand its financial support for businesses, housing and regeneration projects across the region.

Broadoak were appointed by Develop North in February to help them explore options to grow the fund and have helped them to devise a new strategy which (subject to shareholder approval) will be implemented later this year.

Since its inception in 2017, Develop North has deployed more than £80 million in capital to support 39 projects, creating and supporting over 12,000 jobs and helping deliver a gross development value in excess of £275 million. The new fundraise will help accelerate the company’s growth and provide investors with a platform to capitalise on the strong tailwinds currently benefitting the North East.

The proposed investment policy will focus on three deployment strategies: real estate lending, as well as commercial and residential real estate investment, all with a strong regional focus. The changes reflect a growing demand for flexible, locally informed capital that can accelerate economic growth and support community infrastructure.

The company’s expanded investment policy will enable Develop North to:

Provide real estate loans to support housebuilding and commercial development.

Invest in and upgrade commercial real estate assets to attract tenants and drive regeneration.

Secure residential real estate through freehold or leasehold and to provide capacity and support to supported housing providers.

The enlarged asset management team will include Broadoak and Homes or Houses who will work alongside existing investment adviser Tier One Capital and will bring deep regional insight and sector expertise.  This will enable Develop North to identify and execute high-quality investments that align with market opportunities and community needs.

John Newlands, Chairman of Develop North, said: “The North East is on the cusp of transformational growth, and the private sector has a vital role to play in supporting that momentum. With devolution and investment frameworks now in place, the North East and Tees Valley Combined Authorities are making the region more investable than ever. As a trusted investment partner, Develop North is well-placed to ensure that the investment opportunity of the North East is open to everyone.”

Fergus Trim, Director of Broadoak added: “This announcement from Develop North is an exciting milestone towards the delivery of an important source of additional capital for the North East. The widening of the investment policy gives a great platform for balanced exposure to real estate opportunities in the region.  We are delighted that Broadoak has been a core part of the team, working with Tier One Capital and Develop North in helping them reach this stage and look forward to working closely on the next phase of Develop North’s evolution.”

Ian McElroy, Chief Executive of Tier One Capital, added: “There is a growing expectation that institutional investors, including Local Government Pension Schemes, will support investment into UK regions with real economic potential. We are witnessing the start of some real momentum in this process, with a number of globally recognised investment firms now allocating capital to the North East. With two proactive and positive metro mayors in place with strong devolution settlements, the North East is seeing increased attention from policymakers and the market alike.”

The Broadoak team were popping the champagne corks and celebrating with guests at the recent Insider Media North East Property Awards held at the Newcastle Hilton.

Broadoak were successful winning the Specialist Consultancy of the Year award at the sold out event attended by over 600 of the leading lights of the region’s property industry.

Insider Media said in making the award ‘Broadoak provides specialist consultancy services across both Asset Management and Development Management. It has recently been working with Tier One Capital to support the strategic growth of North East investment fund Develop North PLC, and has been appointed to work on Newcastle Helix, Grainger Market and Newcastle United’s Strawberry Place. The judges were impressed with the work they are doing with Newcastle University to bring forward new Prop-Tech innovations.’

Broadoak Director Fergus Trim said ‘we are delighted to have got the judges vote and won this prestigious award. It has been a great 12 months at Broadoak working on some amazing projects for some wonderful clients.  It’s an exciting time for the region and the opportunities that lay ahead.  As a team we will continue to play our part in helping deliver the next chapter in the North East success story.’

The Broadoak Asset Management team are joining Newcastle’s delegation to MIPIM in the South of France (10th to 14th March),  working with Tier One Capital to represent Develop North PLC, the North East-based investment company listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange.

Develop North provides investment and alternative finance solutions to developers in the North of England and Scotland, whilst simultaneously generating attractive returns for investors. The Fund has invested almost £100m into the region since 2017.  These investments have helped deliver over £250m of GDV.

Broadoak’s Fergus Trim and John Seager will both be at MIPIM and will be meeting a variety of stakeholders and investors on behalf of the fund.

Broadoak’s John Seager said ‘We are pleased to be supporting the North East delegation at MIPIM this year. The region has got some really strong projects to showcase to the Investment community at MIPIM. As part of that we are delighted to be representing Develop North and the exciting opportunity for the fund to be part of the North East’s success story.’

Fergus and John will also be hosting the Develop North sponsored closing networking reception at the Invest Newcastle pavilion at the Croisette Village on Thursday afternoon from 17:00-18:00.  See you there!

Follow the link here to hear more about MIPIM from Broadoak Director John Seager and Tier One Capital’s Ian McElroy  https://youtu.be/zjpssRIC0DY

Broadoak are delighted to have been appointed by Tier One Capital, the Newcastle-based fund and wealth management specialist to help support the strategic growth of successful North East investment fund, Develop North PLC.

Develop North has been listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange since 2017 and is a leading provider of property development finance in the North of England and Scotland.

Working alongside Develop North’s fund management team, Broadoak has been appointed to help expand the reach of the fund to support more residential and commercial property developments in the North East, while also supporting its plans to explore options for future additional fund raising.

The fund has already provided more than £80m in debt funding to 39 residential and commercial projects, creating significant economic growth in the region and helping to create over 3,200 jobs.

Develop North currently has a niche focus on the North of England and Scotland, offering bespoke secured loans of between £0.5 million and £5 million to credible and professional property developers across residential and commercial sectors.

Ian McElroy, Chief Executive, Tier One Capital, said, “We are delighted to appoint the team at Broadoak to work alongside our existing fund management team. John and Fergus will be a valuable addition and we expect them to make a significant contribution to the next phase in the strategic growth of Develop North.  To date we have worked with many development teams in the North of England and Scotland, to provide a gross development value of more than £160m.

“Integrating John and Fergus’s expertise with our team brings a wealth of property experience as we look to capture exciting growth opportunities in the region.”

Broadoak Director Fergus Trim said ‘We’re excited to be appointed to work alongside Tier One Capital’s existing fund management team. The Develop North fund has a great track record, and we are looking to build on that and take advantage of some big opportunities in the North East.

“Devolution and a changing investment and development landscape has created real opportunities for a trusted local fund with a focus on the North East and a depth of knowledge of the local market.  We are keen to bring our expertise to support the growing impact the fund can have on this region.”

Follow the link for a video to accompany this news    Tier One – Develop North – Broadoak v2

 

The joy of working for a number of clients is the variety that we see and the knowledge that we ourselves gain from each project.

In 2019 we began assisting Newcastle City Council with one of their most celebrated public property ownerships. One that had endured for almost 185 years but was struggling to support itself amongst a competitive and changing retail environment – the Grainger Market.

Amongst the turmoil of lockdown but working with a wonderfully motivated and inspired team we put together the idea of a transformation plan that would broaden the appeal of the market, whilst retaining its incredibly important existing customers and make it more appropriately people centric for the audience of today.

It’s home to more than 100 businesses, including the Marks & Spencer Penny Bazaar, which has been there since 1895.

The Grainger Market first opened William IV was king, Sir Robert Peel was Prime Minister and Charles Darwin was on his way to the Galapagos to look at some finches.

What we realised was that the Grainger Market could tell us a lot about how to adapt to changing times. It’s an institution, and it has been a vital part of daily life since 1835 – and you don’t achieve that without knowing how to ride out a few storms.

The world is an unimaginably different place today, but the market remains at the heart of the city’s retail and social offer, continually responding to what customers want from it, recognising how it has to change to align with their daily lives.

The core proposition is the same – it’s a place where people can get daily essentials, visiting a butcher, a baker and a fruit and veg stall.  But around that core offer, the identity of the market has evolved. Now, it’s a place where people can visit all manner of sellers – clothes, collectables, gifts, a jeweler, even an opticians.  You can also pick up lunch on the go or stop for a meal – sit and enjoy different environments within a bustling market.

Inherently, the existence of the market – a place where you can buy affordable produce, meet friends, just a few minutes from where your office might be, continues to be so important to attract everyone back to the city again.

The initial vision was put forward as part of the Levelling Up Funding and was successful in securing a substantial grant towards adapting and preserving this important asset. What we hadn’t had the opportunity of doing at that stage was truly engaging with the traders about their aspirations. Something we quickly managed to put right by a detailed and open process.

I’ve had the pleasure to get to know many of the traders through our work, and what’s incredible is the variety.  Some are people just starting their business and their spot in Grainger Market might be their first business location outside of their house.

Others might be third or fourth generation holders of the same stall, despite that continuity of service, they’re adaptable because they know their customers better than anyone else and they know what they want. They also have the scale and flexibility to react quickly to what is selling and what isn’t – to change their business model to suit changing times – it’s something the rest of us can learn from.

The last few years have been defined by rapid change in people’s habits – not least how much more time we spend working away from the office and outside of city centres.

What we know now is, when people come to the office, it’s not because it’s where they work, it’s because they have a reason to be there. Some of that will be defined by team catch-ups and collaborative working, but some of it will be defined by the space itself and the outside environment – and that’s where Grainger Market and our city centres can become the real stars.

The great news is that our original vision has now evolved to delivery and the contractors are on site now implementing the changes which will be completed during 2025. We’ve been inherently involved in leading the initial multi discipline design team, the engagement and co design process, the long term business planning and communications about the project

Broadoak Director Laura Sykes has attended the 1st General Assembly of the EU funded WILSON Project in Milan.  On the second day there was a site visit to Ex – Caserma Papa in Brescia, hosted by the Agenzia del Demanio, (the Italian State Property Agency), one of the other Project Wilson pilot partners.

The site will see a major redevelopment of a former Italian army barracks in Brescia.  It is being rebuilt as a state administration hub and completion is expected by 2028.    This will provide new offices for the Guardia di Finanza, the Civil Motorization and the Customs and Monopolies Agency: an operation that should save the state coffers around €1.4 million per year.  This project is one of the Project Wilson Pilot sites, alongside Newcastle Helix, which is the UK Pilot site that Broadoak are hosting in conjunction with Newcastle University for the 4 year long project.

Laura said “ the General Assembly provided a valuable opportunity for all partners to meet face to face, share updates and set goals for the upcoming phases of the project”

For further information on the project, please visit   https://wilson-project.eu/

Broadoak Director John Seager shares his thoughts…

It was an absolute pleasure to meet Legal and General’s new Group CEO António Simões last week at Newcastle Helix.  The Broadoak team, in our role as Estate Director, were delighted to showcase some of the fantastic things that are being achieved here. The breadth of his experience and immediate understanding about our purpose and vision was great to see. It really highlighted the importance of building connections and partnership that match aspirations for investment, the kind that is ready to go on a journey and help achieve a long-term vision for the region.

To kick off the day Legal & General announced the launch of a new £1 million fund to help improve health equity in the North East, aimed at supporting community-based projects that tackle societal issues. This followed the recent announcement of the North East region’s first Local Growth Plan under the leadership of Mayor Kim McGuinness. L&G’s Social Impact and Investment Director, Pete Gladwell and Head of Social Impact Investment Julia Goldsworthy shared insights into the number of expressions of interests they had already received. Meetings and tours of Newcastle Helix followed this announcement including many of those involved in Newcastle Helix including Jane Robinson, Ben Rodgers, and Michelle Percy FRICS.

There was very obviously plenty of discussion about attracting investment to the region and, more importantly, the right kind of investment that has impact. The “we’re open for business” tag line for the region should not ignore the need to ensure that we have a minimum set of expectations from all investors that is appropriate to achieving our ambitions around inclusivity and sustainability.

This is certainly the case when it comes to regeneration, placemaking and investment, anyway. In those cases, if you want to do something transformational, you’ll have to approach everything a bit differently. And that’s why it’s so great to have an investor like Legal and General as part of the Newcastle Helix partnership

Not everyone thinks like that. Traditional thinking works on the basis that there is a broad sense of where the best development opportunities are in a particular area. The temptation, or typical thought, is to attract any investment by using what’s already going on around there – “you’ll be well-connected, you’ll be near other development, you’ll have access to X, Y or Z, there are other similar things that have been successful”

What you’re trying to do with that is sort of tell the story of a place, but it’s inherently backward looking. It can work well where you’re trying to build on past success, adding a few more building blocks on top of your tower, but if you’re trying to do something transformative, then it’s not enough.

It’s also not enough to put together your proposition and then court any investor who shows an interest – sometimes you need the right investor for the right project.

That means doing your prep work first.

I’ve done lots of that over the years with the many projects I’ve been involved with, and I think there are three fundamental elements to it.

1. You need to get the right people in place – the right partners – often spanning multiple sectors.

2. You need to know what your mission is and make sure it’s one which works for everyone.

3. You need to get the story right and tell it in a way which attracts the kind of attention, and the kind of investment, you want.

The success of Newcastle Helix has come as a result of getting all of those elements right.

The engagement team we have put together with Charlie Charlton, Chris Taylor and Natalie Eminae live and breath our vision and in Legal & General , Newcastle University and Newcastle City Council we have a set of partners who are all focused on the long term, and all bought into the mission of the site.

It’s an easy mission to grasp too – an innovation district where we address some of the biggest challenges facing the city and the region, while being a thriving business community and a commercial success too.

People can sometimes dismiss big, external investment as inevitably resulting in people at cross-purposes – they’ve got their goals, you’ve got yours.

But if you can articulate the mission, and tell the story right, then the success comes from everyone pulling in the same direction.

The reality is that if you have a grand vision, you’ll often need the heavy lifting to come from elsewhere – you simply won’t be able to achieve as much alone as you’d be able to with outside support.

The sweet spot is when you have a locally-defined vision, being delivered by local providers, and benefiting local people, while also helping an investor meet their goals.

That needs effective management.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have been involved in a host of roles over my career where that’s gone really well.

I spent over 12 years at Gateshead based UK Land Estates, working with a motivated and trusted team as part of a public private partnership, delivering all sorts of developments from award winning business parks to refurbishing older industrial properties and everything in between. Because of our long term investment, the relationships that we built up with every single occupier were meaningful and relevant, we celebrated their business successes and were also there to assist through more difficult times if necessary.

I took these learnings into my role as CEO of Siglion, the Sunderland public private regeneration company, getting development started at the former Vaux Brewery site, where others had failed for more than 2 decades of stalemate. We also transformed a massively underperforming publicly owned commercial property portfolio into robust and profit producing assets that still provide a great revenue stream to the local authority.

You can see the same process at Newcastle Helix, which continues to hugely benefit from local intelligence and old hands delivering efficiently and effectively on a combined long term vision.

Each project has been very different, with different characteristics and desired outcomes. What they all had in common was that planning had started early to prepare for investment, we defined a clear shared vision, and that the process was managed in a hands-on way, not just through the development phase but into the lifecycle of the site too.

Good asset and partnership management seeks out connections and ways to add value, and it comes with an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the place it’s working in, coupled with a clear view of how any given asset sits within the future vision for that place.

As it stands, the North East is a fairly leaky region when it comes to investment, with just 43.4% of the investment which enters the country via the region staying in the region.

The bulk of that onward investment is into other parts of the UK – 95.2% in fact – suggesting we’re an attractive entry point, but we’re not doing the best job selling the region and making investment sticky.

We’ve got to do better at that in the North East, and projects like Newcastle Helix are at the centre of being able to achieve that. It’s a place that has done its prep work, got its story straight and is matched to the right kind of investment by understanding what the shared vision is at an early stage, and not forgetting that. If we want to achieve long term goals we have to focus on the right kind of long term partnerships.

Broadoak have been named as a project partner of the Wilson Project, a major 4-year pan European research and development project.

WILSON will develop and demonstrate a number of new prop-tech solutions in large-scale pilots across four different European countries.  Newcastle Helix has been selected as the pilot for the UK, and Broadoak are working with Newcastle University to deliver the project. Overall, the project aims to upgrade 200,000 m² of buildings and reduce maintenance costs by up to 35%.

Key objectives include improving building operations, evaluating environmental impact, and enhancing building diagnosis and monitoring. Personalized Data Hubs (PDHs) will connect and integrate all WILSON solutions, adhering to International Data Space (IDS) principles. These solutions will be complemented by an Investment Tool to support decision-making on renovation and RES investments.

Broadoak Director Fergus Trim said ‘WILSON is a great project to bring to Newcastle.  It will develop nine innovations that focus on data management, property management, environmental performance, and building diagnostics. These innovations will then translate into practical applications such as tools for predictive maintenance, biodiversity assessment, risk and resilience analysis, and smart readiness indicators. It is good news that Newcastle will be at the forefront of the development of this new property technology’

The EU-funded WILSON project aims to enhance data management in the built environment through a decentralised, interoperable data mesh architecture, integrating advanced data analytics and digital twin technologies to improve building management systems (BMS).

In the long-term, WILSON seeks to ensure Europe’s global competitiveness, data sovereignty, and achievement of European energy and environmental goals by 2050, resulting in a highly energy-efficient and decarbonized building stock.

For further information on the project, please visit   https://wilson-project.eu/

Broadoak have recently completed two exciting projects on the Strawberry Place site for Newcastle United FC.  Broadoak acted for the previous owners Reditum in selling the site to the football club and were retained by the new owners to act on their behalf helping to bring the land back into use as two temporary uses until a permanent use for the site is brought forward.

The first of these was the Stack fan zone, a major new outdoor leisure venue offering 6 bars and 10 street food offers.  The second was a new club shop to be used while the stadium shop is refurbished as part of the new partnership with Adidas.

The Broadoak team helped co-ordinate the planning consent, liaising with various stakeholders and then tendering and managing various works on site.

Broadoak Director Fergus Trim said ‘Strawberry Place is a landmark site in Newcastle.  We were delighted to be retained by Newcastle United Football Club to help them deliver both these fantastic schemes and bring the site back into use for the fans ahead of the start of the new season.’