The Castle Mall is located in Norwich City Centre with direct access to the pedestrian zone. It comprises over 33,000 sqm of covered lettable space in 80 shop units with one of the main car parks in the city providing parking for 710 cars. Tenants include a number of well-known retailers such as TK Maxx, New Look, Boots and Argos as well as an eight-screen multiplex cinema let to Vue. Norwich ranks as the 10th U.K. retail market, according to retail analysts CACI, with a primary catchment exceeding an estimated 1m people.
InfraRed has been a long-standing investor in U.K. shopping centres having managed three specialist shopping centre funds between 1998 and 2006 and acquired and sold 20 shopping centres. In 2011 it re-entered the U.K. shopping centre market, after an absence of 5 years, acquiring The Galleries in Bristol and in March it bought the St Johns Centre in Liverpool from Land Securities.
Chris Huxtable, Director at InfraRed, said:
“The purchase of Castle Mall completes a hat-trick of shopping centre deals for us since we re-entered the U.K. shopping centre market at the beginning of 2011. This time, we have directed our investment into in the top-tier retailing cities and into large centres that are characterised by high footfall, affordable rents and strong retailer performance. This segment of the retail market has proved resilient in the current economic climate. We plan to add considerable value to the centres through additional investment.”
InfraRed has appointed the Hark Group as asset managers and Munroe K Asset Management as property managers and DTZ provided advisory services to InfraRed.
