Serving the Teesside Business Community | 19
Transformed – Mandale has given the newly-named Mandale Business Park development a new lease of life in Durham.
Upgrade – Mandale is currently renovating Stockton’ s Arkgrove Industrial Estate in a £ 1m redevelopment.
Home from home – Mandale’ s eye-catching HQ, which is situated on Pennine Avenue, off Portrack Lane, in Stockton. in tatty industrial units. Everybody wants quality now.
“ Mandale Park is on the 30-acre site of the former LG Philips electronics factory. When the firm went into administration we bought it and stripped it back to its steel frame, then converted it into industrial units as well as building some offices.
“ The size of the units is completely flexible depending on tenants’ needs. We have let units from 2,000 up to 6,000 sq ft and we even have plans to build a 58,000 sq ft distribution unit. They’ re being snapped up quickly and we’ re on site fitting them out to the required specifications. Virtually any size can be provided.”
The wide variety of tenants already on the site includes a car parts distributor, a forklift truck supplier and a bathroom and kitchen company.
“ There’ s strong demand for the offices we’ ve built,” adds Joe.“ Severn House is already finished and fully let and we have two more office blocks under offer.
“ We’ re constantly trying to stay ahead and cater for what people actually want and need. If we find something isn’ t working, we’ re able to diversify into something else.“ When the technology boom took off about ten years ago and people started using mobile phones and iPads more, we found that companies were retracting and losing staff. Offices were being left vacant and we had lots of To Let signs all over the area.
“ We realised the office market was shrinking, so we started selling some off and converting others into apartments, as well as buying vacant offices that we could make into apartments.
“ We’ re continually searching for more offices above shops to convert into apartments, which we think is a niche market at the moment. We recently completed a scheme at Forest Hall in Newcastle, a parade of tired-looking shops with a 20,000 sq ft former council office building above them.
“ We converted the offices into onebedroomed apartments and now it’ s a beautiful building with ten very smart shops.
“ We’ ve stayed away from the high street but retained retail properties in side streets such as Dovecot Street, Ramsgate and Shipping Yard in Stockton.
“ We’ re realistic and understand what people can afford to pay in rent, which means that as well as having many large companies we have a lot of businesses run by local people as well.”
The company’ s constant willingness to tweak its business model and constantly adapt to an ever-changing world has proved to be a highly lucrative formula.
So if you see Joe and ask him,“ Ey up, how’ re Mandale doing?”, he won’ t be snookered for an answer. The response will be that they’ re doing very well, thank you.