3 Assembly Square sets new record Cardiff rent with Abel & Imray deal29th March 2012

A new record rent of £22 per sq ft has been set in the Cardiff office market in a deal that sees Abel & Imray move to Cardiff Waterside’s flagship 3 Assembly Square building.

The leading patent and trade mark attorney firm is taking circa 2,900 sq ft on a ten year lease in the Aviva Investor owned building on Cardiff Bay’s Britannia Quay. The firm will move into the 66,215 sq ft waterfront building from their current location in Windsor Place in March 2012 as part of a long-term strategy to grow and expand their offering of quality intellectual property (“IP”) services to the South Wales market.

Abel & Imray’s Cardiff office opened in 2001 and employs experienced patent attorneys handling work in all technologies, including engineering, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, electronics, optics and ICT.

The firm’s clients in Wales include well known organisations such as Cardiff University, Cassidian, Contour Aerospace, Norgine Pharmaceuticals and a wide variety of high-tech and/or high growth Welsh SMEs. They have a trade mark team which provides a comprehensive brand protection service. The office also provides other intellectual property services such as IP audits, IP due diligence and IP strategy advice.

The firm, which also has offices in Bath and London, will join existing tenants KPMG, Acuity Legal and Gambit Corporate Finance at the six storey office.

Ben Bolton, Head of Office Agency, Cooke and Arkwright, acting for Cardiff Waterside said: "It’s no surprise that 3 Assembly Square has attracted the highest rent ever seen in Cardiff. Thanks to the building’s innovative design, environmental credentials, vibrant waterfront location and on-site multi-storey car park, 3 Assembly Square has established itself as the most impressive business location in the region. We’re confident that other organisations will soon be making the same decision to locate in the Bay.”

Designed by architects Scott Brownrigg and sustainability consultants Arup, the building is engineered to maximise energy efficiency. Features including a biomass boiler, chilled beams and rainwater harvesting have seen the building achieve the prestigious environmental stamp of BREEAM ‘Excellent’.

Mark Sutton, Associate, Knight Frank, said: “This deal is a landmark for the local office market but moving to 3 Assembly Square can be significant for tenants in another way; figures show that its state-of-the-art environmental technologies and systems reduce energy and carbon costs by 36% against a typical building. It’s rare for a building as prestigious as this to also be good for the bottom line.”

Chris Terry of Fletcher Morgan, said: “Having established Abel & Imray’s requirement for a modern high specification office suite and investigated suitable opportunities in Cardiff, 3 Assembly Square was identified as the preferred option. Abel & Imray were impressed not only with the quality of the product but also the structure of the incentivised package agreed with the landlord in what remains a challenging market with ever reducing levels of grade A office accommodation.”

Cardiff Waterside comprises 550,000 sq ft of contemporary office space encompassed in a selection of eight flexible offices at the cutting edge of design. Planning consent has been granted for further 500,000 sq ft.

Knight Frank and Cooke and Arkwright are joint agents for Cardiff Waterside. Fletcher Morgan acted for Abel & Imray.