Corby's Phoenix Parkway retail park SOLD to investment firm

The Phoenix Retail Park, which was formerly owned by Manchester-based Peel Holdings, has been sold for an undisclosed fee.

Known locally as Phoenix Parkway, after the road it sits on, the retail park grew up on the site of the blast furnaces after the steelworks closure, and helped to offer hope to the people of Corby that their town would survive such a huge change.

It’s now home to Matalan, Sports Direct, Halfords, The Range, Next, Curry’s, Iceland Food Warehouse, Pets at Home, Boots, Superdrug, M&S Simply Food and Starbucks.

It’s been purchased by Columbia Threadneedle Real Estate, which buys and develops real estate using money from a group of investors.

The fund also owns Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal.

It’s hoped that the sale may result in investment at the retail park, which has only had one new unit built in the past decade – a Starbucks that opened earlier this year.

The sale – the first in its 36-year-history – includes all the retail units except Asda, as well as 341 car parking spaces.

Columbia Threadneedle announced the sale to the city this morning (Thursday, May 16), alongside the purchase of Phase 2 and 3 of Merry Hill Retail Park in Dudley on behalf of separate client funds for undisclosed sums.

They also recently bought Parkgate Shopping Park in Rotherham earlier this year, making them one of the largest retail park owners in the UK.

Phoenix Parkway has 118,200 sq ft of retail warehouse floorspace. It was transferred from British Steel in 1981 to Corby Council. Part of the site was developed by Asda and then the remainder was purchased by Peel Investments in 1987 and the retail park was subsequently built.

Tom Elviss, Fund Manager at Columbia Threadneedle Real Estate said: “The simultaneous acquisition of both Phases 2 and 3 at Merry Hill Retail Park from two separate vendors constitutes a majority holding at one of the UK’s dominant retail warehouse clusters in the West Midlands. This presents a significant opportunity to maximise the assets’ potential under single ownership.

“Phoenix Retail Park is set to benefit from Corby’s sizeable residential development pipeline, which brings with it a catchment growth proposition that will allow us to enhance the tenant mix further.

“At both locations, we intend to draw on our strong retailer relationships and scale in the retail warehouse market as we seek to proactively asset manage the holdings to deliver strong returns for our investors.”

Savills advised the Columbia Knight Frank represented Peel Holdings.