Sven Topel must be a happy man - although the Brookgate chief exec is not one given to over exuberance - just look how smiley he in this pic. CB1, the £800m Cambridge development Sven's company is behind, seems to be having quite a good run. The first phase of the student accomodation was opened last month (Sven's on the right of this picture with the head of property at Anglia Ruskin University at the opening) , with all the students moved in that weekend, and, as revealed in EG this week, developer Brookgate is in advanced negotiations for a prelet to Mott MacDonald (£).
The deal to the engineering and development consultants is a deal only Brookgate could have done.
Mott MacDonald is already a tenant on the CB1 site occupying a total of 40, 000 sq ft in various bits and bobs of buildings as well as its main office at Dementer House. Nobody else could have managed their property portfolio, housed them temporarily while a new office was developed and then put them neatly back into a new improved and expanded Dementer House - which will be rebranded as 22 Station Road.
Rents and lease lengths are being kept under wraps but it's likely Mott MacDonald will be signing up for something similar to KPMG at Botanic House, on its sub lease from Mills and Reeve. There's no official word on the rents but it's believed that deal was inked at around £32 per sq ft.
And it seems that's how deals are getting done in Cambridge at the moment. Last year's big deal to Mills and Reeve at Botanic House was pretty much the same. Jamie Wheatley partner at the law firm is pretty blatant that one of the main reasons they went with Pace Investment's development was because they were exisiting tenants on the site and Pace could manage it's lease commitments.
The deal is also interesting as it will allow Brookgate to crack on with more space than Mott MacDonald actually need. It will inject some Grade A space into a much starved market and provide the first true test for just how much latent demand is out there.
In a city where prelets are very thin on the ground and stock is even thinner is this the Cambridge of the future?
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