After a lengthy period of quiet activity there has been an improvement in some key areas of the region as companies move from a watching brief to more active participation. This is the theme for Hemel Hempstead and Watford, while Milton Keynes continues to perform steadily and Cambridge remains buoyant.
The improvement in Watford is particularly apparent. Peter Brown of Brasier Freeth lists a whole series of lettings in the office core of the town. These were all to blue chip companies, such as TK Maxx taking 929 sq.metres (10,000 sq.ft.) and the big construction company Vinci slightly less. Ivico has also taken space, as have others in Grade A offices.
Brown said: “It has been a reasonable period but the reality is that we happened to have done a number of deals in a period of a few months and fundamentally the office market is still relatively quiet.”
He also feels the market has benefited from the 5 year cycle of lease renewals and is not completely confident about the performance for the rest of the year. In fact rental levels and incentives have not changed much. Some areas close to London are also experiencing a rise in activity, such as Wembley, where Quintain has a major project and St Modwen has a town centre scheme based on the railway station.
Clearly this will make Wembley a nodal point for London since the Quintain scheme is so large and a bet by Chief Executive Adrian Wyatt on the health of the London economy. But he has shown in other places, such as Greenwich Peninsula, that his instincts pay off.
Another area with long term potential is Dagenham where the dramatic changes in the UK’s industrial base have meant the potential for massive development, the latest being the Sanofi pharmaceutical plant which is due to close in 2013.
The interesting point about Dagenham is that the closure of Sanofi to join Ford brings a lot of land onto the market at a time when the government argues that a shortage of sites is holding back the economy, so the
planning laws must change.
