Jobs bonanza at Muse’s flagship hub

Totalling just over 100,000 sq ft, construction started on site in March and its high-profile occupiers already include Amazon, John Lewis and Premier Farnell.

Muse has embarked on a 15-year regeneration of Logic Leeds, in partnership with Halifax Estates. The logistics hub is strategically located by Junction 45 of the M1 and has over 1.4m sq ft of prime employment space, creating thousands of jobs in the Leeds City Region Enterprise Zone.

Other key Muse developments in Yorkshire include One City Park in Bradford and Forge Island in Rotherham.

Muse has submitted a planning application to the council to bring forward the speculative BREEAM ‘Excellent’, 56,403 sq ft One City Park office development, located in the heart of Bradford city centre.

Earlier this year, Muse signed an agreement with Bradford Council to deliver the development, which has received £7.5m of funding from the Government’s Getting Building Fund through West Yorkshire Combined Authority.

Muse said that One City Park is a key catalyst for the council’s wider regeneration of the city centre and is expected to create 300 construction jobs and another 452 employment opportunities once complete.

At Forge Island in Rotherham, Muse said the repurposing of this key area has moved a step closer, with boutique leisure operator, The Arc Cinema, signing up to become the leisure anchor for the scheme earlier this year.

The proposed scheme will also include food and drink outlets, a hotel, and a car park, with the new leisure facilities set within an attractive public space and a new pedestrian bridge connecting to the wider town centre.

Matt Crompton, managing director at Muse, said: “Following the unprecedented challenges of 2020, our colleagues have continued to work diligently and flexibly to deliver place-changing developments, win new work and make positive progress, notwithstanding the pandemic’s impact on the industry.

“We remain in a strong position, with an extremely healthy forward pipeline and expanding teams across the UK. We continue to work collaboratively with our partners to repurpose under-utilised urban areas, breathing new life into them to drive economic growth, social prosperity and opportunities for local communities.

“We continue 2021 working closely with our partners to regenerate our towns and cities, leading the way on sustainable, innovative and purposeful developments that will improve places, lives and communities for the future.”

The update was issued as Muse's parent company, Morgan Sindall, said the urban regenerator has made a positive contribution to its half year results. Muse has more than 35 major, mixed-use, multi-phase regeneration schemes across the UK.

Morgan Sindall reported a record set of results for the first half of 2021, with trading substantially ahead of ‘pre-pandemic’ 2019 levels.

Compared with 2019, revenue rose 10 per cent to £1.6bn and adjusted operating profit rose 46 per cent to £55m.