Kier Property has bought the Peoplebuilding, a landmark 100,000-square-foot office building in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, from Aviva Investors for redevelopment as a trade and logistics scheme.
Stanhope and Morley Fund Management originally developed the building as a global headquarters that would be the first phase of a proposed circa 600,000-square-foot campus. It was designed by the same team behind and aimed to replicate Stanhope's highly successful Stockley Park and Chiswick Park office campuses in west London.
It was completed in 2002 and than sat largely vacant until the Buncefield depot explosion nearby in 2006, which saw tenants relocate from damaged buildings on Maylands Avenue. At that stage Northgate Information Solutions and IT company 3com both took around 37,500 square feet on short-term leases.
After they vacated it has struggled to secure office tenants.
Morley eventually morphed into Aviva Investors and pursued a potential retail redevelopment of the building. By 2018 Aviva had decided to sell the development as part of Project Symphony, a portfolio of nine office blocks totalling around 465,000 square feet principally located on South East business parks that Cushman & Wakefield was instructed to sell.
By 2019 CLS Holdings began talks to buy "The Collection", a portfolio of UK offices, from Aviva for around £95 million. The portfolio was principally the same as the "Symphony" portfolio that Aviva had previously marketed before selling some assets separately. The sale of Peoplebuilding did not proceed.
Aviva Investors had extended its relationship with JLL to review potential sales from its non-core UK assets.
The institutional investor has been pursuing a “cluster strategy” in recent years where it has been reshaping its real estate portfolio to focus on fewer locations.
The target is strong economies, typically city hubs, and it has publicly stated its focus on five UK locations – Manchester, Birmingham, London, Cambridge and the Thames Valley – as it disinvests from areas such as Glasgow and Nottingham.
The assets up for sale included The Peoplebuilding in Hemel Hempstead and Building 3000 at Hillswood Drive in Chertsey.
Aviva has now completed the sale with a LinkedIn post from Matt Ryan, senior development manager at Kier, confirming it would be redeveloping it as one of its "market-leading trade and logistics developments".
SBY Real Estate advised Kier, while JLL advised Aviva.