The Carlyle Group is looking for a joint venture partner on its mixed-use central London development scheme.
The investment manager has appointed Knight Frank to find an investor with which to partner on the Bankside Quarter project south of the Thames. Carlyle said it had received “unsolicited enquiries” from Middle Eastern, Asia-Pacific and North American investors.
The 1.4m sq ft scheme is in the same district as an ongoing tower redevelopment by CIT Developers in which Hermes and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board last week agreed to invest. The joint venture will pay around £180m for the mixed-use, 41-floor South Bank Tower upon completion between October next year and mid-2016.
At a press conference in London last week, Hermes Real Estate chief executive Chris Taylor said the south bank district offered good value to occupiers and had “relatively little supply” of offices.
He said: “London’s Riverside is proving attractive for residential and commercial occupiers alike; it is located within the improving cluster of mixed-use developments which have transformed the area between Westminster Bridge and Tower Bridge along the South Bank.”
Carlyle, which received planning permission for Bankside Quarter in March this year, is equally enthusiastic about the area. Both Bankside Quarter and South Bank Tower include residential elements.
Carlyle Group managing director Mark Harris said its phased scheme, on which work will begin next year, offers a “once in a lifetime opportunity to regenerate a prime, central riverside site of significant scale”.
Bankside Quarter will replace the 170,000 sq ft Ludgate House and 350,000 sq ft Sampson House, once part of Simon Halabi’s £1bn real estate portfolio, linked to the troubled White Tower 2006-3 commercial mortgage-backed securitisation (CMBS) and bought by Carlyle in 2010.
