|
Godfrey Bradman, with Lord Young and
Richard Frischmann of Pell Frischmann, has won a £350m
PFI contract.
The group beat the Trevor Osborne/AMEC
consortium this week on the scheme to provide 43,500m2
(468,245 sq ft) of new medical teaching space in central London in
exchange for four prime Kensington and Chelsea residential development
sites.
King’s College and the United Medical
and Dental Schools will get 30,000m2 (322927 sq ft) at
Cornwall House on the South Bank near Waterloo Bridge and 13,500m2
(145,317 sq ft) at Hunts House on the Guy’s Hospital campus near
London Bridge. The phased occupation of the new research and education
facilities will release sites in West London, which European Land has agreed terms to redevelop as
residential space.
Bradman said that the surplus land
“should take 74,320m2 (800,000 sq ft) of residential
development”. Outline consent already exists for up to 270 apartments
with a small amount of office space at the 2.83ha (7 acre) site at 552
King’s Road, which extends up to the
Fulham Road in Chelsea. The consortium also gets a site at
Manresa Road
near fashionable Chelsea Square and a
further site on Campden
Hill Road near Kensington Town Hall.
Frischmann said that the consortium would be making a series of
staggered payments for the cost of the building works on the new
facilities, for acquiring the sites the colleges occupy now and the cost
of developing them.
|
Following the general election, civil
servants have hesitated to call the scheme a PFI, preferring Public
Private Partnership (FPP) instead. But sources say it is a FF1 in all
but name, with Bradman’s special purpose vehicle,
European
Land, providing new and refurbished
facilities for the colleges at a price fixed for 25 years.
Bradman said: “The project is
divided into two elements: first the provision of refurbished and
rebuilt facilities for the colleges and in addition to that the
building out of the surplus land.”
Secretary of King’s College Bill
Slade said that the bidding turned into a straight fight between
Osborne and Bradman’s consortium: “It comes down to price and
confidence. In the end one’s got to feel comfortable that not only
is the price right but that the consortium is able to do what it
says it will.”
The college will get a share in
development profits from the residential schemes above a certain
level. “The beauty of this transaction is that we get certainty from
day one and we’re not exposed to the risk of change in the property
market,” Slade added.
Richard Frischmann
is the son of Dr Willem Frischmann, chairman of the privately owned
agency to civil engineer Pell Frischmann, which bought part of the
former Property Services Agency for £11.4m and sold it later for
£84.6m.
Jones Lang Wootton advised the
college, Montagu Evans advised European Land.
|