Published at 09:19, Thursday, 03 January 2013

ONE OF the prime sites in Carlisle’s Botchergate has changed hands for £8.8m.

Pioneers: The Vue cinema and Woodrow Wilson pub

London-based OLIM Property has bought the freehold of the Vue Cinema and Woodrow Wilson pub on behalf of its client the BAE Systems Pension Scheme.

The vendor was Glanmore Property Fund.

Neither the pub nor the cinema is affected by what amounts to a change of landlord.

The cinema has seven screens and totals 49,000 sq ft. The letting to Vue is worth £673,977 a year with three per cent fixed increase annually. The lease expires in 2025.

The pub is 18,000 sq ft and is let to JD Wetherspoon at £101,000 per year until 2027 with five-yearly open-market reviews and a break option in 2022.

The initial net yield on the investment is 8.25 per cent but it will rise as the rent on the cinema increases and is likely to exceed 10 per cent by 2020.

CBRE acted for Glanmore and Knight Frank and Kitchen La Frenais Morgan represented OLIM Property.

The redevelopment of what had been a Co-op store was at the forefront of the revival of Botchergate as the city’s entertainment quarter in the late 1990s.

JD Wetherspoon was the first national name to set foot there when it opened the Woodrow Wilson in May 1998.

The cinema, then a Warner Village, followed in June 2000.

Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk