Urban&Civic has acquired the former Alconbury Airfield in Cambridgeshire, UK for £27.5 mln (EUR 30.8 mln). The property was commissioned as an American airbase during the Second World War and was declared surplus to requirements by the Ministry of Defence in March 1995. The existing estate comprises over 100 buildings, ranging across industrial and aircraft hangars, warehousing, office and fuel stores. Current gross income totals approximately £2.3 mln, which Urban&Civic will look to increase.
Urban&Civic has acquired the former Alconbury Airfield in Cambridgeshire, UK for £27.5 mln (EUR 30.8 mln). The property was commissioned as an American airbase during the Second World War and was declared surplus to requirements by the Ministry of Defence in March 1995. The existing estate comprises over 100 buildings, ranging across industrial and aircraft hangars, warehousing, office and fuel stores. Current gross income totals approximately £2.3 mln, which Urban&Civic will look to increase.
Urban&Civic is backed by GI Partners, the trans-Atlantic private equity house. Urban&Civic will target strategic land and estate acquisitions of metropolitan or regional scale capable of sustaining new, or improved, places and environments.
Urban&Civic is working on a pipeline of other prospective acquisitions and expects to make further announcements in due course.
Commenting upon the establishment of the new business, Nigel Hugill, executive chairman of Urban&Civic, said: 'We have been working closely with GI for some months and are delighted to be able to announce their backing to Urban&Civic simultaneously with our first investment. The challenge now is to garner support for the right mix of ongoing uses - very much as we have been able to achieve in the past. We are looking to put together, perhaps, five or six acquisitions of similar scale and potential.'
Established in 2001, GI Partners is a private equity firm that focuses on control-oriented investments across North America and Western Europe in asset-intensive businesses or portfolios of assets that are underpriced relative to their intrinsic value. The team focuses on a number of key sectors, including specialty healthcare, asset-backed IT services, leisure, real estate and financial services.
