Graham Smith | Marchday

Waste to Energy, a Waste of energy?

We have had some fascinating discussions recently with experts and providers in the fields of waste to energy, biomass energy, CHP and district heating systems.

A big thank you to everyone that we have spoken with.

All of the discussions are focused mainly but not exclusively, on our Masterplan implementation at Lingfield point Darlington.

It is always great to be learning something new but when there are direct and potentially profitable applications for our mainstream business it is even more exciting.

Could we turn New Lodge, Windsor into a 150 year old grade 2* listed zero carbon building or retro fit non carbon based CHP to award winning regeneration projects at Lingfield?

Maybe we can!

If we can do so and make the projects more profitable at the same time, even better!

I suppose the honest answer to that is “maybe”

Cash flow is all important at the moment so we whatever we buy it would need to be income producing… some ideas:

Problem retail or potential retail

Perhaps a poorly let or poorly configured retail unit, parade or small centre. Something which by active management and physical restructuring could be improved? Lot size probably £5m to £10m, potential for improvement would be more important than running yield but there would need to be income. Where?………..It would need to be a decent population centre with Best Zone A values north of £100 ITZA

Country House Offices

If you know New Lodge, (if you don’t come and see it), you will understand our Monticello concept. Briefly it is to take a large attractive country house office HQ building, flood it with IT and comms turning the building into an efficient and flexible “plug and play” building. The model is then to create a number of small traditional lettings on 3 yr leases but to encourage and assist customers to expand and contract within the building.The emphasis is on customer focus. We get income resilience by the number of lettings, and added value from the premium rents which result from the high quality surroundings in which our customers work.

If the building has land for expansion all the better.

In truth we probably wouldn’t fancy buying a vacant building on spec in this climate but an income producing Country House office investment with potential to become a Monticello project in improved economic times might well get us interested. It would need to be at least 20,000 ft2 of net office space preferably 30,000 ft2. Anything less doesn’t work. It would also need to be within the catchment of a decent office population.

Industrial

Large, old and tired is probably what we are looking for but importantly there would need to be a story, change of use, break up etc.

If you are familiar with Lingfield Point you will be aware of our active management approach and a developing expertise in regeneration. We get stuck into projects and prefer things which have the critical mass to justify our management time.

At Lingfield we purchased 2,000,000 ft2 on 107 acres. We have demolished a fair chunk of it, converted a fair chunk to modern large floor plate air conditioned offices and have recently achieved consent for a master plan to provide over 1200 eco homes and an additional 300,000 ft2 of offices.

We now have the green light to produce a genuine mixed use eco community.

We have learnt a lot of lessons along the way and developed a whole range of new skills which we would love to be able to apply to other projects with similar potential. There won’t be many properties like Lingfield Point out there but if you are aware of such opportunities we would love to know about them.