Scenario
The King’s Cross site is 26 hectares of brownfield land north of King’s Cross and St Pancras stations (see attached plan). The London Borough of Camden has granted outline planning consent on the site to enable a major mixed?use development which includes offices, retail, restaurants, leisure, residential and university buildings. The largest single use is offices which are being built in blocks on various plots across the site. Momentum has established itself at King’s Cross (www.kingscross.co.uk) where The University of the Arts, London campus is now occupied and leading companies such as Google are going to move in. Some of the office blocks have been completed and are occupied, others are at various stages of construction while a start has not yet been made on some plots. One of the un?developed plots is T3 which will be the focus of the project.
The developer is King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership which is led by Argent Group plc. In the project scenario, the Partnership wishes to spread the risk by disposing of some of the peripheral plots to other developers. The developer that you work for: Sustainable Estates has become interested in purchasing Plot T3 on Canal Reach as the plot has planning consent for 12,077 m2 (130,000 ft2) of net office space over 8 floors. Your line manager has asked you to undertake a two stage feasibility study for Plot T3. The first part is a market assessment to try to establish the extent of demand for offices in this location. The second part of the feasibility study will be a development viability and funding report which, amongst other things, will recommend the maximum bid that Sustainable Estates could make to buy Plot T3.
Part 2 – Funding report
Funding. This part of the report should examine funding options available to support the development of Plot T3. This part of the report should distinguish between debt and equity and identify any differences in funding during the development stage and post?development stage.
