Orchard Street Impact Fund acquires 193,000 sq. ft. retail park in Leicester

Orchard Street Investment Management (Orchard Street) has acquired St George’s Retail Park in Leicester on behalf of its Impact Fund, The Orchard Street Social & Environmental Impact Partnership (The Fund) from Tritax Big Box. 

Located 0.5 miles away from Leicester City Centre, St George’s Retail Park comprises 193,000 sq. ft. of prime retail space across 16 units, housing popular names such as Home Bargains, Pets at Home, Iceland Food, Aldi and Costa Coffee. The fully-let retail park benefits from robust tenant trade and a central location with very limited nearby retail park competition. 

The scheme is currently fully-let, with excellent opportunities to evolve the tenant mix in the short-term whilst also significantly decarbonising the asset in order to meet the Fund’s Social and Environmental Impact objectives. The Fund intends to undertake low embodied carbon refurbishments across the largely 1980’s scheme to improve EPCs from a range of D-B ratings to A ratings, electrify units to reduce carbon emissions, install extensive solar PV panel arrays, and increase EV charging provision. The Fund is also targeting significant biodiversity net gains and will partner with local institutions to provide a green construction skills internship and apprenticeship programme. 

Orchard Street’s Social and Environmental Impact Partnership targets value-add real estate investment opportunities with the potential to generate a measurable social and environmental impact, via the decarbonisation of buildings, investing in local communities, and improving the health and wellbeing of building users and the local population. This transaction follows the Fund’s acquisition of two multi-let South-East industrial estates.

Barney Rowe, Portfolio Manager of the Impact Fund at Orchard Street, said, “This is a popular retail park drawing on a very large catchment, proven by the calibre of existing tenants and high levels of customer footfall. We strongly believe the combination of the opportunities to reposition the tenant line up alongside the decarbonisation measures we intend to make will see St George’s Retail Park become a best-in-class retail park generating significant value for our investors.”