AN office building in Piccadilly is to become a new apart-hotel for the city this summer.
Abacus Court, office provider Magnus’s 41,500 sq ft office building in Minshull Street, will change its name to SACO House after Manchester City Council agreed to a change of use from B1 offices to 63 high quality one, two bedroom apartments and studios. The apart-hotel will be pre-let to and operated by the worldwide serviced apartment network, SACO, currently occupying space in 5 Piccadilly Place.
Manchester City Council agreed to a change of use from B1 offices to 63 high quality one, two bedroom apartments and studios.
Vicki Cook, New Business Director of Magnus confirmed that SACO have taken a new 15 year lease at Abacus Court over ground and five upper floors at a rising rent of £540,000 with annual uplifts.
She said: “The timing was right for SACO and for us as we were considering the future of Abacus Court following the vacation of PWC (Price Waterhouse Cooper LLP). The whole transaction moved very quickly through legal and planning as all parties worked closely together with a common goal for Magnus to deliver to SACO 63 apartments by summer 2013.”
With SACO taking the majority of the building, Magnus will now have a small office/retail suite available at ground floor level and 50 basement contract car parking spaces.
Ed Lockyer, Magnus’s Estates Director, said that Barnfield Construction have been appointed as main contractor on the £3.5m project and work has already started on site.
He said: “This is a complex transition from an existing office building to apart-hotel use which is further complicated by the timescales involved. We have affectively condensed an 18 month pre-construction procurement programme into six months along with targeting a very tight practical completion date. Our legal and design teams have worked extremely hard to overcome many challenging hurdles and a great deal of credit must be granted to them”
The deal was brokered by Savills, who have acted for both Magnus and SACO elsewhere in the UK.
