Cooke & Arkwright
News
UWIC Fairwater Campus site sold for over £3.5 million
02/11/04
Acting on behalf of UWIC (University of Wales Institute, Cardiff) and the Reardon Smith Nautical School Trust (the Trust), joint agents Cooke & Arkwright and Burnett Davies have sold the three-acre former Fairwater Campus site to Persimmon Homes Wales for approximately £3.6 million.
The brownfield site has a gross development value of £10.6 million and outline planning consent for the provision of 50 new homes. The development will provide a mix of two bedroom apartments, three bedroom townhouses and four bedroom detached homes. Work on site is expected to commence in February 2004 and will be named ‘Reardon Smith Court’.
Alan Liddington, property manager at UWIC, said that the decision to concentrate provision on other sites had been part of the university’s strategic estates plan as far back as 1992. “The campus was fairly remote from our other site at Llandaff,” he said. The campus had been home to UWIC and its predecessors since the mid 1950s, providing halls of residence and lecture rooms for students in Llandaff and more recently, a conference centre run by UWIC. Prior to that, the original Trust property was utilised by the Trust as The Reardon Smith Nautical College for the training of officer cadets from around the world.
The location of the site makes it ideal for residential use according to Michael Lawley of Cooke & Arkwright. He said its close proximity to local shops, the library, a health centre and an outdoor ski slope, with good public transport links to the City centre had attracted a number of developers.
Andrew Crompton, the land director at Persimmon said that the planned scheme would retain the majority of mature trees which stand within the boundary of the development. He pointed out that Persimmon places high emphasis on designing its dwellings and the associated landscaping to be in keeping with the character of an area and to respect, protect and enhance the local environment.