The retail park offers in excess of 27,000 sq ft of high-quality retail accommodation with large landscaped parking areas. Currently fully-let to leading national brand operators Pets at Home, Home Bargains and Pure Gym, the park offers a sound long-term investment for the new owners, whilst also contributing a much-needed boost to the existing retail offering in Haverhill, which has historically suffered from customers travelling to neighbouring towns to shop.
Howard Group has owned the site, which was previously home to the Project Office Furniture Group, since 2007. Over the years plans have been approved for an out of town retail park with industrial/manufacturing accommodation to the rear, but it was 2015 before sufficient interest from national retailers was secured to commence development. The new estate, along with the adjacent site sold to Lidl in 2015, has created circa 150 jobs and brought new life to the high-profile parcel of land.
As part of the original planning consent Howard Group funded a new pedestrian crossing on Ehringshausen Way as well as gifting a parcel of land to the St Edmundsbury Borough Council to extend the county wildlife site, alongside the old Haverhill railway line.
In addition, Howard Group also secured an outline consent for employment uses on a further two acres to the rear of the retail park. This has been retained by Howard Group and is being actively promoted to potential occupiers in a bid to bring further jobs and investment to the town.
Colin Brown, Director - Development, Howard Group commented: “As a family-owned business with strong values, we strive to create places that have a positive impact on the communities around them as well as to deliver benefit and value to the local area. Taking an innovative approach to showcase the flexibility of the units at Haverhill Retail Park has resulted in a national brand occupier list that has significantly raised the retail profile of the town. More specifically, the letting to PureGym in October last year, one of the largest leisure operators in Europe, brought an affordable lifestyle brand to the town, which is both a complimentary offering to existing tenants on the retail park as well as the wider Haverhill community.
“The park’s location within the town and the attractive long leases combined to make Haverhill Retail Park a very attractive investment opportunity and we are delighted to hand over the reins to Barsham Securities as the now owners.”
Barsham Securities Ltd main commercial portfolio is concentrated in the Eastern Region and comprises primarily retail and office investments. The main portfolio locations include towns and cities such as Colchester, Chelmsford, Clacton, Norwich, Ipswich, March, Felixstowe.
Stuart Holmes, Director, Barsham Securities commented: “We are delighted to have secured this high-profile, new retail property for our investment portfolio. The strong tenants, being the only retail park in Haverhill and situated in a prosperous and growing Suffolk town, made this an investment opportunity we wanted to secure, and in line with our investment and portfolio strategy.”
The sale of Haverhill Retail Park is in line with Howard Group’s longer term property strategy to reposition focus towards the core cities and markets across Cambridge, Oxford and London that are experiencing longer-term structural growth; as illustrated by the clustering of key knowledge intensive industries, the rising density of economic activity and improving national infrastructure investment.
Read more about the development of Haverhill Research Park