NEWS INTERNATIONAL HAS PUT ITS WAPPING SITE up for sale with a price tag of around £200 million. This will be good business for the company as it paid just £10 million for the site in 1985.
The site, scene of the UK’s most notorious print related industrial dispute, will become housing, shops and offices. According to the London Evening Standard, a £2 billion development would replace the press halls and carpark with 2,000 flats in 26 storey blocks. There would also be a retail centre and offices vacated by the newspapers equate to 200,000sq ft of space on the fringe of the City.
THIS MIGHT BE INCREASED BY A FURTHER 500,000q ft of additional commercial space to take the value of a redevelopment beyond £2 billion. Details have been set out in a high quality brochure from selling agent CBRE.
However, this not the first attempt to develop the site, which includes old warehouses and thanks to a high brick wall enclosing the site, retains the air of the old dockyard operation it would have been. Permission was granted for a 27 storey tower in 2003 which was to have been a media city for News Corporation housing journalists and studios. Then in 2005 the site was put on the market, but there were no takers. By then the operation had been cleared of printing presses thanks to the £650 million investment in plants at Broxbourne, Glasgow and Liverpool.
ANOTHER MEDIA CAMPUS WAS PLANNED IN 2008 but not enacted as recession bit and now the closure of the News of the World and air of scandal around the company has prompted the idea of a new start and disposal of the site.
CBRE is reported to be in talks with potential buyers already. Its own tracking of commercial property activity shows some delays due to the current economic uncertainty, but there has been an increase in leasing activity. In November deals for 1.1 million sq ft were signed, the highest level since 2010, while availability also increased with secondhand office space coming back on to the market.
WHILE NOT AS EXTENSIVE, THE VALUATION points to a healthy profit when the West Ferry site, the first in Docklands to be occupied by national newspapers, comes to market. The Express and the Star titles are in the process of taking up press capacity at Luton where two of the four KBA presses are in operation. Meanwhile Associated Newspapers has to announce plans for its next phase of development. It did state it wanted to move from Rotherhithe to a greenfield site at Thurrock on the M25, but nothing move has been heard, and options for contract printing have been mooted. When built Harmsworth Quays was in a run down location, but this has changed dramatically thanks to develop of better transport links and its proximity to central London.
