Oxford's Templars Square shopping centre bought by Dutch real estate company Redevco

By Nicky Godding

23 December 2021

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On behalf of an investor client, Redevco, one of Europe’s largest privately-owned real estate investment managers, has agreed to acquire Templars Square in Oxford for £38.8 million from New River. Redevco is purchasing the 1960s local shopping centre with a view to transforming it into a landmark residential-led mixed urban scheme over the next decade. The project has a pre-existing planning consent that includes 226 residential units.

The disposal is conditional on Oxford City Council’s freeholder approval to assign the headlease, release from a previous agreement and expiry of the six-week judicial review period in relation to the planning decision notice. The judicial review period has now expired.

Tom Hoye, Transaction Director at Redevco United Kingdom, said: “Templars Square offers an outstanding opportunity for Redevco to do what it does best, namely helping cities become more sustainable and liveable places. We plan to take a much-loved, but dated, retail asset and transform it into a thriving urban destination which will continue to draw in the local community.”

Templars Square, which lies 2.5 miles (4 kms) south-east of Oxford’s city centre, is a covered mall-based shopping centre with some open-air and street-facing retail units, two car parks (Knights and Barns Road) and upper-floor offices. The 3.65-hectare site is broadly located between Cowley’s Towns Road to the north and Hockmore Street to the south. The asset is part freehold, with the majority owned as long-leasehold for a period of close to 200 years.

Oxford is attractive as it is one of the UK’s pre-eminent university cities and at the forefront of the growing life sciences industry. With a population of over 150,000 inhabitants the city is faced with a significant housing shortage.

Redevco, part of COFRA Holding AG, is a real estate investment management company with 280 assets under management of a total portfolio value of about €6.7 billion.

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.