All gone

At a time when many cities, including Birmingham, are seeing a decline in Grade A offices, the last speculatively built big shed in the UK has been let to Amazon.

This is Gazeley/Met Life’s 65,030 sq.metres (700,000 sq.ft.) shed at G-Park, Rugeley, Staffordshire which was taken by the on line retailer on a 15 year lease. Known as Flair, it has been available since 2008.

Such has been the pace of Amazon’s expansion that it has leased a number of large sheds in the UK at Doncaster and Peterborough as well as a massive warehouse in Dunfermline, Fife.

It comes at a time when, said Colliers International, average prime and secondary rents in the Midlands have been static for 12 months. Colliers’ Simon Norton said: “I have a distinct feeling of dejavu reading the statistics. They are no different from 2010.”

But he believes they are likely to increase now that the take up of prime space has eaten into supply. “The lack of speculative development due to the scarcity of funding and the general lack of confidence due to the recession have exacerbated the situation.

For the first time in years, landlords are beginning to feel that they may have the upper hand and are holding out for better rental terms.” At the heart of the decline was the fall in land prices. For example, in the West Midlands lot sizes of 10 acres or more averaged £484 an acre this year compared with £221 in 2006.

Where land is available for expansion, developers are increasing the size of existing estates, such as Hortons at Hollymoor Point, Rubery where it will build a new unit for NVC (Manufacturing) China’s largest lighting manufacturer, who already occupy a unit there, making a total occupied of 8,454 sq.metres (91,000 sq.ft.) at Rubery.

Typical of many estates, Target Park, Redditch only has two units available after the sale of a 1,134 sq.metres (12,209 sq.ft.) warehouse to Heartbeat Manufacturing.