Art-Invest Real Estate has gone to market seeking a funding partner for, or outright sale of, the £400 million purpose-built student accommodation part of its giant development project in London's Canada Water.
Market sources said Acre Capital Real Estate and CBRE have been appointed on a targeted sales process after the German developer gained consent in April for a student homes, affordable homes and community space development, replacing a consented proposal for a 26-storey office tower at Dockside Canada Water’s Plot B in London. The student homes element has a gross development value of £400 million.
The German developer is planning an "urban quarter" at the 130-acre site that aims to act as a gateway to British Land and Australian Super’s proposed 53-acre new town centre in Canada Water.
Art-Invest secured outline planning permission from Southwark council for its masterplan for more than 1 million square feet of offices in 2022. The proposals for Plot A remain unchanged from a detailed application approved in September 2023.
Plot B, designed by international architecture practice TP Bennett, now proposes two residential-led buildings and will bring forward 742 student rooms and 75 affordable homes, with a mix of social rents and intermediate tenures. In line with Art-Invest’s initial proposals, there will be community space and significant improvements to the surrounding public realm.
Plot A prosoes two buildings, One Dockside and Two Dockside, and would result in more than 700,000 square feet of offices on the Rotherhithe Peninsula, next to a zone 2 transport hub. The buildings have been designed by architect BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group and HWKN Architecture.
Art-Invest Real Estate completed its acquisition of the Canada Water Dock site from Notting Hill Genesis for £140 million in 2020. At the time The Shard developer Sellar had been appointed to co-develop the 4.5-acre site, which had an indicative masterplan for three commercial-led buildings totalling circa 1.2 million square feet. There was also an existing consent for 1,000 residential units, including the 234 units and new Decathlon store that Sellar completed in the summer of 2018.
Acre Capital Real, one of the UK's leading boutique office and industrial advisers, added a living sector advisory platform to its business in August 2023.