Bill and his team nail the opposition

Nov 20 2007 By The Journal

THE Valley is the region’s leading mixed-use business and industry park.

It comprises in the order of 238 hectares with around 650,000 square metres of commercial accommodation and is the location for more than 700 businesses.

One person who has been involved with the acquisition and disposal of many hundreds of thousands of square feet of this commercial space, and is an acknowledged expert on Team Valley, is Bill Naylor, managing director of Naylors Chartered Surveyors.

From his offices on Kingsway, where the company has had a base for 15 years, Bill has probably bought, sold, leased and asset-managed more commercial properties on Team Valley than any other person alive today.

What’s more, his company has handled the disposal and acquisition of many of those properties more than once.

Take, for example, the property at 201 Kingsway, minutes from the Valley’s busy junction with the A1 Western Bypass.

Constructed in 1968, Bill acquired the building on behalf of Waddingtons Labels who operated under the name of Communisis until late 2004. When Waddingtons Labels finally shut its doors, Bill was instructed to dispose of the site.

The building was duly marketed by the Naylors’ team and quickly snapped up by a furniture retailer. However, little more than a year later, Naylors found themselves instructed on the same building again.

Terms were agreed earlier this year with Rhodes Asset Management and Naylors has been retained to let the property on behalf of the new owners.

However, while no-one will argue that Team Valley is renowned for its big industrial ‘sheds’ and retail world, Fergus Laird of Naylors argues that Team Valley offers businesses much more.

He said: “Team Valley is probably now one of the busiest office locations in the region outside Newcastle city centre, with some of the highest-quality, award-winning schemes.

“While its roots may be firmly established in the provision of industrial units for manufacturing, the practice of providing high-quality offices on Team Valley dates back more than 20 years.”

At that time, charged with development on the estate, English Estates built its first nursery office scheme at Enterprise House. Comprising a number of units around a courtyard with car parking close by, it immediately attracted office tenants. Kingsway House, another similar scheme, followed this development.

Since then office development has continued on the estate, predominantly at the Fifth Avenue Business Park but also in other locations.

Nationally, a high level of office occupiers prefer business parks to city centres as they offer less dense development and the ability to park adjacent to your offices. They are also removed from the hustle and bustle of the city centre.

Locally, this has been borne out by the continued popularity of the schemes on Team Valley and confidence in office development on the estate is noted by one of the region’s largest and most established developers, UK Land Estates, who have located their own head office on the estate.

More recently, Olas House on the Fifth Avenue Business Park, a property marketed by Naylors, has become the new head office of the Gateshead Housing Company.

Fergus Laird said: “This 21,109sqft, two-storey building, formerly the home of Quality Software Products, had been subject to a £1m refurbishment programme, which created some of the most modern and-well appointed office accommodation on the Valley. Its disposal generated a great deal of interest.”

Established in 1990, Naylors Chartered Surveyors is one of the leading independent commercial property consultancy practices in the region. The company is located right in the heart of the North-East’s property industry and handles a wide range of commercial and industrial properties in an area that stretches from Yorkshire to Northumberland and beyond.

Naylors has a well-deserved reputation for extensive market knowledge, professionalism and high levels of customer care.