It comes at the end of five days of dealmaking for the company, which saw it secure another £55m development loan to construct two other student schemes in Loughborough and Nottingham.
The work on the final phase of Steel City, Sheffield, is being funded by the refinancing of another Maslow Capital development loan that covered construction of both Steel City and the completed Future Generation student scheme, Hythe Mills, in Colchester, Essex.
The third phase of Steel City will create 19 short-let serviced apartments – in addition to the scheme’s existing 324 bedrooms – to be used by parents and friends visiting student tenants. The concept is designed to make it much easier for students living away at university to maintain relationships with friends and family.
The £35m scheme also provides an interactive fitness studio plus Future Generation’s Sky Lounge, a rooftop social space. Construction of the third phase is expected to be completed by the spring of 2021 and a construction partner is yet to be chosen.
Steel City and Hythe Mills have both been fully let since September 2019.
Hythe Mills is a £25m, 229-bedroom student scheme containing an interactive fitness studio and riverside networking hub.
Andrew Southern, chairman of Southern Grove and Future Generation, said: “The fact that these funding facilities are still coming together, even with Covid-19 wreaking havoc on industry and economies around the world, is testament to the long-term security of the student accommodation sector in the UK. We are going to weather this storm and come out of it even stronger, with positive consequences for the incomes of those firms and workers who help us to make these developments a reality.
“The completion of Steel City will also be an incredibly proud moment for me personally. Sheffield is my home town and I still have plenty of family and friends there.
“It is a pioneering example of everything we’re trying to achieve nationally, transforming people’s expectations of student accommodation in terms of design and quality.”
Source: Residential - propertyweek.com
