Strong pipeline of new commercial space across Warwickshire
A study has revealed a healthy pipeline of available commercial space in Coventry and Warwickshire, but also indicated that supply is tighter in some locations than others.
Across Coventry and Warwickshire there are 54 industrial units that have been speculatively built or are just about to be completed, representing 2,959,034sqft of available space, while a further 1,830,678sqft over 17 buildings over the same schemes have already been let. This does not include older, used buildings that are coming back on to the market.
The new stock is split 396,128sqft over 43 units for SMEs (units less than 100,000sqft) and 2,562,906sqft over 11 buildings for larger requirements over 100,000sqft.
The SME-focused sites include the WPDG Sucham Park in Southam, Exhall Park in Bedworth, Holbrook Park in Coventry, Precision Park and Spa Park in Leamington. The sites with larger units include SEGRO Park Coventry Gateway, Redditch Gateway, Ansty Technology Park and Tritax Symmetry Rugby. Beyond this there is further supply of design and build options, primarily in the larger big box space, which isn’t included in these figures.
The office market was less active, typical of recent trends outside of major cities. The exception to this was the Warwick sub-market, where the 60,000sqft office and mixed use redevelopment of House of Fraser came online. The Creative Quarter in Leamington had a major boost when the major refurbishment of the former URC church was completed and occupier Cogent moved in, with creative skills provider SAE moving in next door.
Over in Warwick the former IBM Campus in Warwick saw The Woods building fully occupied by a mix of bpfs (business professional, financial services), med-tech and software companies. The building next door, now known as The Point, is currently finishing a significant refurbishment with Telent as anchor tenant.
While there is good supply of new commercial space for SMEs in some locations like Exhall, Coventry and Southam, there is less space in locations like Leamington and Rugby.
The study was carried out in March 2024 by the inward investment service Invest Warwickshire. The service provides soft landing support to companies setting up in the local area. Available property in the Coventry & Warwickshire area can be searched using the Coventry & Warwickshire commercial property search portal https://coventrycommercialproperty.evolutive.co.uk/
* This article was amended on April 18th, 2024. to revise a figure in the second paragraph. It should have stated '54' not '71' units. 71 was the total of 54 and 17 for available and recently let.