Aberdeen council has backed development partner Henry Boot’s funding proposals for a £333m conference and exhibition centre
on the outskirts of the city. The planned £333m Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre will be built at Bucksburn near the
Dyce airport and will replace the existing AECC at the Bridge of Don, which was built in 1985. A mixed-use residential-led scheme is proposed for the Bridge of Don site once the new centre is up and running. Boot will submit detailed plans targeting a planning permission by the end of 2015 to develop the initial phase of the project, including the 750,000 sq ft exhibition and conference centre, two hotels and an anaerobic digestion green energy centre. Construction is penciled in to start in mid-2016 and run through to the end of 2018.
McLaren Construction is set to build a major new out-of-town retail and leisure scheme at Rushden Lakes, in Northamptonshire.
LXB, the company behind the major retail and leisure site just off the A45 at Skew Bridge, plans to strike a deal shortly to start the near 500,000 sq ft complex. The plans will see the former Skew Bridge Country Club and dry ski slope redeveloped with a 74,000 sq ft home and garden centre and 340,000 sq ft of shops across three terraces, alongside a lakeside visitor centre with restaurants.
Developer Harworth Estates has won approval from Salford Council to develop a £200m business and country park at the Cutacre
site (which was once Europe's largest mining slagheap). Named Logistics North, the major infrastructure covers 4 million square feet and will include an L-shaped 550-acre country park as well as business units, a hotel, and shops. Aldi is building its new north west headquarters and distribution centre at the site and missiles manufacturers MBDA is moving there too. Also, there are two other major companies that are currently in negotiations with Harworth over locating to the site.
The landmark Grosvenor House Hotel in London has been put up for sale after its owner was placed into administration. The fivestar hotel, on Park Lane, is expected to fetch more than the £470m Sahara Grosvenor House Hospitality paid for the building in 2010
- a record for a hotel in the UK. JLL has been appointed to find a buyer for the Grosvenor, which has 420 rooms, 74 suites, 27 meeting rooms and the largest five-star ballroom in Europe. Deloitte was appointed administrator to Sahara on Monday night after it defaulted on debts tied to the hotel. The underlying operating lease with Marriott, which operates the hotel, is unaffected and the hotel continues to trade as normal.
Following a record year of new development in 2014, Marriott International, Inc. has announced that it expects to triple in size in
Europe by 2020 (since 2010) to reach 150,000 signed or opened rooms across its portfolio of brands – a substantial increase from the 40,000 rooms it operated in 2010. This expansion in Europe is part of Marriott International’s global growth strategy, which includes having one million rooms open or in its development pipeline by the end of 2015. As part of this development Marriott
International has announced plans to open 2,700 Moxy hotel rooms in key cities throughout Europe by end 2016. With a goal of
150 Moxy hotels and 25,000 rooms by 2020, the company expects to sign at least 4,200 rooms in 2015 alone. The announcement follows the successful debut of Moxy Milan Malpensa, Italy in September 2014 and the news that the brand is entering the U.S market with eight identified properties slated for major metropolitan locations, including three in New York City (Chelsea, Mid-town and Lower Manhattan), San Francisco, Seattle, New Orleans and Chicago. In partnership with Vastint Hospitality as the owner and developer and franchise partners, Nordic Hospitality and ZLEEP Hotels for Moxy Copenhagen, the following Moxy hotels are expected to open by end 2016:
1.Moxy Munich Airport, Germany - located five minutes from the main terminal - winter 2015
2.Moxy Eschborn, Germany - located 10 minutes from downtown Frankfurt and 15 minutes from Frankfurt Airport – early
2016
3.Moxy Frankfurt Gateway Gardens, Germany - located in the campus of Gateway Gardens , walking distance to Frankfurt
Airport terminal 2 - summer 2016
4.Moxy Aberdeen Airport, UK – mid 2016
5.Moxy Berlin Ostbahnhof, Germany - near Alexanderplatz, Prenzlauer Berg and the River Spree – early 2016
6.Moxy London Royal Docks, UK - close to the ExCel Exhibition Areas and Canary Wharf - autumn 2016
7.Moxy London Stratford, UK - next to Europe’s largest Shopping Center and adjacent to the Olympic Park – summer 2016
8.Moxy Oslo Exporama, Norway– next to one of the largest exhibition grounds between Oslo and Oslo Airport - summer
2016
9.Moxy Copenhagen, Denmark – close to Scandiagade which has seen much development in recent years for offices, retail and residential developments - summer 2016
10.Moxy Essen, Germany – located right in the city centre of the West German City of Essen, a short walk from one of the busiest train stations in Germany - winter 2016

11.Moxy London Heathrow Airport, UK - located on Bath Road with quick access to Heathrow’s Terminals – winter 2016
Carlson Rezidor further strengthens its network in the United Kingdom by announcing the Radisson Blu Hotel, Birmingham
Airport. The property, featuring 220 guest rooms, is scheduled to open in early 2017.
International architecture and design firm Jestico + Whiles (J+W) has been appointed by TIAA Henderson Real Estate (TH Real
Estate) to design a luxury hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Edinburgh St. James Hotel will act as the centrepiece of the overarching
St. James development. With a price tag of £850m, the project is retail-led with the aim of transforming leisure in the Scottish capital. Once complete it will offer 750,000sq ft (69,677sq m) of retail space, the hotel and 30+ dining destinations. The J+W design for the 210 room hotel is focused around the concept of coiled ribbons, to allow a free-form structure, boasting flexibility and a striking frontage. Slotting into the overall masterplan, the hotel will offer a restaurant space and a loft bar offering panoramic views of the city. Work is starting later in 2015, and the overall development is expected to be complete by 2020.
McAleer & Rushe has bagged a hat-trick of hotel wins with a £19m contract to build 146-bedroom Adagio aparthotel for Artisan
Real Estate Investors in central Edinburgh. The six-storey hotel in New Waverley regeneration scheme will be built behind an existing facade facing onto the Royal Mile. To the rear, the hotel will link with a proposed new public square and pedestrian walkway which will be central to the wider £150m redevelopment. Artisan’s plans for the site include 177,000 sq ft of offices, 28 retail and leisure businesses as well as more than 140 apartments and townhouses, and 40 affordable homes centred around a
£6.5m civic square. McAleer & Rushe’s other two recent hotel contracts wins in the city were for Premier Inn and include a 130bedroom hub by Premier Inn, which will be the first to open outside London and a 127-bedroom, 6-storey hotel. Both projects will sit next to each other along the road from the Adagion. All three hotels are designed by Alan Murray Architects.
The four-star Ramside Hall hotel in Durham is undergoing a £16m redevelopment which includes the creation of a Presidential
Suite, said to be the largest and most luxurious in the region. The impressive suite will have panoramic views, a large dining area, bedroom, dressing room and extra bathroom. The major revamp also includes 47 extra bedrooms, which are set to open in April, and a spa that will ready for use in July. The new Cathedral golf course opened last year.
The former Regency Royal Hotel is being transformed into Llandudno Bay Hotel & Spa which is set to open its doors in North
Wales this summer. The hotel, which was bought in December, is expected to open in June with the spa opening shortly after once construction work has been completed. The redevelopment program will see the building transformed into a 61-bedroom, boutique-style hotel, with a 90-cover restaurant, bar and lounges with function space for over 150 people.
Boutique-budget hotel group, Z Hotels is due to open its sixth budget boutique hotel this May in Shoreditch, London. It will be the fourth hotel London for the brand, adding to existing hotels Z Soho, Z Victoria and Z Piccadilly which launched in summer 2014.
The 107-bedroom hotel is housed within a former office building in The Bower, a new mixed-use 320,000 sq ft development in the
Old Street area. The development includes a restaurant set within landscaped public spaces, Gymbox on Old Street, and retail units.
European hotel chain Leonardo will open its first property in the UK later this month, having acquired a 25 year lease on the
former Holiday Inn at Heathrow Airport. The property on Bath Road will be rebranded Leonard Hotel London Heathrow Airport and will open on March 16 with 230 rooms.
Hilton Liverpool is set to expand to incorporate a large events space and restaurant. The new Grace Suite will be able to accommodate 600 people for a banquet and up to 900/1000 theatre style, making it one of the biggest event spaces in the city. The extension will also provide a 400 sq m unit, which will become a ground floor restaurant and terrace. There will also be a a 400 sq m retail unit on the ground floor of the extension, joining the shopping offering in Liverpool One. The £55m hotel opened in 2009 and is located on the edge of the Liverpool One shopping complex. It has 215 bedrooms.
Hull City Council is considering proposals from London developer Hollybrook Homes to develop a £20m ice rink and 50-metre
swimming pool in the city centre. The Olympic-size pool would be situated on the former Edwin Davis department store in Hull city centre and would be used to host international events.
North Lincolnshire Council is planning to build a new £5m leisure centre in Crowle. The council said the facility, which includes a swimming pool, would be built at The Axholme Academy, on Wharf Road. Finances for the project would come from a combination of grants and North Lincolnshire Council's own resources. The next stage will involve detailed designs and a further consultation, with plans for the leisure centre to open in Autumn 2016.
Amber Taverns has acquired The Saracen's Head in Dudley town centre and is to invest £600k to transform it into a sports pub.
Amber Taverns is now seeking planning permission and listed building consent to demolish a side conservatory and create a new terraced area. The pub group is aiming to reopen the venue in June.
Olive Tree Brasserie of Lancashire is planning to develop a nationwide chain of ten restaurants over the next five years. The firm opened its second site in November last year which is located in the heart of Preston.
Healthy fast casual chain, Leon is planning to expand its London-based chain of 21 restaurants with 12 new sites this year.

Having opened their first outlet in Carnaby Street in 2004 the Leon team are eyeing a US expansion in 2016. By establishing a growing presence in transport hubs around the UK, the founders are hoping to reach an international audience, and help create demand for Leon ahead of overseas openings. US-based HMSHost - part of The Autogrill Group - operates five Leon Restaurant locations, in transport hubs around the UK including Heathrow Terminal 2, Heathrow Terminal 3, Kings Cross Station, Eurotunnel,
East Midlands Airport & Stansted Airport. The concession operator will open Leon's first two franchised outlets in the US.
Bella Italia and Cafe Rouge operator, Tragus has announced that revenue for the year rose by 3.8% to £193.1m. The company has also revealed plans to rebrand itself as the Casual Dining Group (CDG) ahead of expanding its portfolio with 70 new restaurants over the next few years.
A £200m-turnover construction group which was building a £32m hotel project in Leeds has entered administration after being
hit by trading and cash flow issues, including three "substantial claims on contracts", with the loss of about 350 jobs.
Administrators are now actively seeking purchasers for "all or part of the business or assets". Tony Nygate and Graham Newton of
BDO were appointed administrators of GB Group Holdings Ltd and GB Building Solutions Ltd on 9 March 2015.
Lancashire County Cricket Club’s plan to build a 150-bedroom four-star hotel at the Emirates Old Trafford have been boosted with Greater Manchester's Combined Authority agreeing to provide a £5million loan towards the scheme, the total cost of which
is estimated at £12million. The proposed hotel will replace the club's existing on-site 68-bedroom Old Trafford Lodge. The new hotel will mark the final phase of the stadium’s redevelopment and will be operated through a branded franchise. The redevelopment of Emirates Old Trafford has included creation of The Point, a strikingly modern state-of-the-art meeting, conference, banqueting and exhibition facility overlooking the pitch plus a brand new Pavilion as well as a variety of new meeting spaces around the ground.
Westmont Hospitality Group, the new owner of the Lowry Hotel in Manchester, is planning a major £4million refurbishment of
the landmark hotel on the Manchester/Salford border. A comprehensive makeover is planned for the 165-bedroom hotel including new curtains, carpets, fabrics and colour schemes throughout the bedrooms and public areas. A final decision is expected in March or April with the refurbishment complete by the end of 2015. The Lowry Hotel is located on Dearmans Place next to Trinity
Bridge a short walk from Deansgate in central Manchester. It is a member of the Leading Hotels of the World consortium.
At least three of the 40 new properties Starwood Hotels & Resorts intends to open in Europe over the next five years will be in
the UK. The USA-based hotel group has announced that it will expand its European portfolio by almost 30% by 2020. New hotels from Starwood this year include five properties in Turkey; and each in Russia, Germany and Holland; alongside launches in Romania,
Italy and Croatia. Meanwhile, the UK is expected to have to wait until 2017 until the next opening from Starwood with the launch of the Aloft and Element mid-market brands as part of a dual development in the Tobacco Dock area of East London. The signing of a third new hotel for the UK is due to be announced in the coming weeks. There are currently 10 Starwood hotels in the UK: Aloft
Liverpool; Aloft London Excel; Le Meridien Piccadilly; Sheraton Grand Hotel & Spa, Edinburgh; Sheraton Heathrow; Sheraton Skyline;
Trump Turnberry, a Luxury Collection Resort; the Park Lane Hotel; the Park Tower Knightsbridge, a Luxury Collection Hotel and W
London - Leicester Square. Worldwide, Starwood Hotels & Resorts operates more than 1,200 properties in nearly 100 countries.
The Battersea Power Station Development Company has today launched its drive to attract “world-class” tenants to the power
station in an ambitious bid to create a new office district in London. This includes 470,000 sq ft in the power station itself, over six floors with an average floor plate of 80,000 sq ft. There will be 1.25m sq ft of net lettable office space across the 42-acre site, sitting alongside shops, boutiques, cafes, restaurants, hotels, an urban food hall, a 2,000 capacity event space and leisure facilities including a six-acre Riverfront Park.
At the end of last year, British Land submitted its plans for a 347,000 sq ft redevelopment of a site on Blossom Street on the
fringe of the City. Now, as it waits for Tower Hamlets council to give it the green light. Architects AHMM, Stanton Williams, DSDHA and Duggan Morris have all been brought on board - each taking a part of the scheme to design. The design team has drawn up a scheme comprising seven buildings linked by a series of yards and passages designed around both existing and historic routes and spaces that have been built on or closed off. Theproposed development retains the buildings that are of significance in terms of heritage, including the Water Poet pub, and the new buildings have been designed to blend in with the existing ones. In some cases, the development will restore the appearance of buildings to their original form. Planning consent was originally secured in 2011 for an office-led, mixed-use scheme on what British Land calls Site One, but the developer went back to the drawing board for a more comprehensive plan to reinvigorate the entire area. The scheme’s offices will be spread across a number of buildings - a departure for British Land, which usually opts to build huge office properties with large floorplates. In this case, the 262,000 sq ft of office space will have floorplates ranging in size from 1,000 sq ft to 20,000 sq ft .
A private banking and wealth management firm has put one of the top floors at 8 St James’s Square under offer, igniting the
battle to break the highest office rent ever paid in the UK. SG Hambros Bank - part of French banking giant Société Générale - is poised to take the 8,000 sq ft fifth floor of Green Property’s 65,000 sq ft building for close to the asking rent of £150/sq ft.

Peer-to-peer lending company Funding Circle is close to agreeing a deal to move into 32,000 sq ft at 71 Queen Victoria Street.
The company is understood to have placed the fifth floor of the 187,294 sq ft building under offer.
The former home of the BBC World Service, near the Strand, is close to being secured by one of London’s major universities in a
landmark office letting deal. King’s College London is in advanced talks to take all of the Grade II-listed Bush House, where the BBC broadcast for 70 years before exiting in 2012, in what would be the biggest letting in London’s Midtown so far this year. The university is understood to be eyeing the entire refurbished 114,324 sq ft office building, which is the centre piece of Japanese investor Kato Kagaku’s Aldwych Quarter.
US tech giant Gartner is to move its European headquarters into a new purpose-built 130,000 sq ft office on the site of its current
home in Surrey. The deal, which will see Royal London Asset Management develop the five-storey building at Egham, near Staines, satisfies one of the biggest office requirements in the Thames Valley market and follows a three-year search by the global technology research group. Gartner, which has its global headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, currently occupies two buildings on The Glanty site -Tamesis 1 and Tamesis 2, which total 108,000 sq ft. Royal London will demolish the 40,000 sq ft Tamesis 1 building and build the new 130,000 sq ft office, which gained planning consent from Runnymede council last month. Gartner is in the middle of an expansion programme and anticipates growing its UK workforce by 8% year-on-year. It will transfer its current 810strong staff to the 68,000 sq ft Tamesis 2 building during construction and occupy both offices after completion in 2018.
Private equity fund manager Pantheon has become the latest tenant to sign up to Pembroke Real Estate’s 10 Finsbury Square, in
a deal that sees the traditional West End occupier head east. Pantheon, which will leave its current St James’s Square location, has taken around 17,700 sq ft on the fourth floor of the City of London building. Business law firm Fox Williams has also confirmed it will move to the building and will occupy the sixth and part of the fifth floor, totalling around 24,900 sq ft.
Galliford Try has won an early contractor involvement bid to build a new divisional police station in Wrexham. The £13m deal was secured through the North Wales Schools and Public Buildings Contractor Framework. Under the plan, the current town centre police tower will be demolished in April next year and a new one built at the town’s arts centre.
Regus is expanding its serviced offices business with about 30 new locations in outer London, as part of a £120m investment in
400 sites throughout the world. Founded in Brussels, Belgium in 1989, Regus is based in Luxembourg and listed on the London
Stock Exchange. The global workplace provider has a network of more than 2,000 business centres in 100 countries.
Osborne has bagged a £20m contract to build a new 356-bed halls of residence for the University of Southampton. The new accommodation will replace the university’s old Chamberlain Halls, which was constructed in 1958.
Balfour Beatty has bagged a £21m contract from Lewisham and Southwark College for the next phase of works on its Waterloo
Campus. The project has been awarded through the iESE Framework to deliver works for public authorities in the South East.
Balfour is one of eight contractors on the framework and has now won £200m of work since 2011. The college works will involve the demolition of existing 1970s’ buildings on The Cut near to Southwark Tube station and the creation of a new 7,684m² college building. The latest project will be complete in April 2016.
Great Ormond Street hospital has got the planning green light to build a £65m research centre next to its main site in central
London. Skanska and Bouygues are understood to be among firms in the race for the building to be known as the Centre for
Research into Rare Disease in Children. Gardiner & Theobald is running the two-stage bid process for the seven-storey building, which will bring together clinical and research expertise from Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College London, in particular the Institute of Child Health. The cost of the 140,000 sq ft project, including research equipment for labs, will be around
£65m. Architect Stanton Williams’ design includes extensive glazing at street level offering views into the lower ground laboratories. Construction is expected to start in October this year and the building will open in 2018.
Helsinki City Council has launched a competition to find a developer to build a 2.2m sq ft La Défense-style tower scheme that will
form a new business district. The council’s vision is for for eight to 10 new office towers in Pasila, just north of downtown Helsinki.
The government-owned site is currently industrial land and is the locus for a number of rail lines coming into the city. Capital values for the project will be between €500 (£364) and €800/sq m, officials said. In phase one of the project, between 200,000 sq ft and

550,000 sq ft will be developed, depending on the final design of the scheme.A decision on the developer will be made in March
2016, with work expected to start on site the following year.
Iceland – University hospital requires design and construction
Preparation for tender for complete design of a new University Hospital, design and construction of Hospital Hotel.
This full online edition with links is available at: http://www.businessopportunities.ukti.gov.uk/uktihome/item/866880.html