A local firm leading the way with a strong 2022

Carigiet Cowen, one of our County’s most established firm of Chartered Surveyors, have produced many commercial property successes over the last 12-18 months.
Director Richard Percival heads up the Industrial Agency team at Carigiet Cowen and reports an extremely busy period, across a wide variety of transactions around Cumbria. This includes Komatsu Forest Ltd, who approached Carigiet Cowen in November 2021 having failed to secure suitable existing premises or a site for a new build facility after several years of searching.

Richard undertook a trawl of the market and provided a selection of existing and new build facilities for Komatsu to consider. Several of which were not being actively marketed.

Following this, Komatsu made the decision to proceed with the purchase of a 1.75 acre plot at Carlisle Airport Business Park. Planning consent has now been secured and construction is shortly to commence on a modern, state of the art new build facility of circa 15,000 sq ft. Other significant transactions within this sector which Carigiet Cowen have been involved in, include:

• The Sale of the well let industrial investment at Currock Road Trade Park, Carlisle with Wolseley UK and Howdens as the core tenants
• The Sale of circa 18.5 acres of development land at Eden 41 Business Park, Stoneybeck, Penrith
• The Letting of over 70,000 sq ft of warehousing space at Main Line Industrial Estate, Milnthorpe, near Kendal
• The Letting of surplus space within the state-of-the-art MEC Facility at Dovenby Hall Estate, Cockermouth on behalf of M-Sport Ltd

Richard concludes: “While the lack of current space is a concern moving forward especially with price inflation, scarcity of materials, labour, and ever-increasing fuel and energy costs, we continue to use our best endeavours to work closely with existing land property and property owners, developers, investors and end users to make transactions happen.”

Acting on behalf of the DVSA, Mike Beales, associate director at Carigiet Cowen secured the sale of two former HGV test centres located at Crooklands near Kendal and Heathhall Industrial Estate, Dumfries. The properties comprised some 8,000 sq ft of workshop/office accommodation on sites totalling 2.34 acres.

Mike has also recently sold 4 Wavell Drive, Rosehill Business Park, Carlisle on behalf of NHS Property Services. The property comprises a modern two storey office building totalling 13,269 sq ft (1,232 sq m) which has been sold to a new owner occupier.

“We received instructions to commence marketing of these properties in 2020, at a very challenging time due to Covid-19. The forced lockdowns and constantly evolving government rules and advice created very difficult market conditions for the UK commercial property sectors. We identified suitable purchasers and were able to agree premium prices on behalf of our clients.”

Carigiet Cowen continues to work closely with BEC who own Westlakes Science Park just south of Whitehaven. The Practice has recently been involved with a number of new office lettings, including the relocation of Costain from the ground floor of Derwentwater Pavilion within the Ingwell Hall Complex, to the ground floor East Wing of Robinson House.

Costain have now taken a new lease of this newly refurbished ground floor office from February 2022. Other new occupiers within the building are Westinghouse and Morgan Sindall.

For further information on our commercial property services, do not hesitate to contact us on 01228 544733 or visit our
website www.carigietcowen.co.uk