The current slump in the economy is making it harder for companies to sell pre-lets to upcoming development projects, an issue that may affect one of the largest city centre projects in Scotland, as Australian developer Stockland has said it will not begin work on the new development project for the Scottish Provident building unless it is able to contract more future tenants.

The Scottish Provident building is located on St. Andrew Square in the city centre and is slated to include apartments, office space with rent desk space and shops but is currently delayed due to a lack of interest in pre-lets.

Stockland’s UK managing director, Ken Lindsay, stated that in the current economy, there is not a lot of tenant interest which is to be expected and the lack of interest has raised some issues for the company.

He further stated that while they would like to start work immediately, and are realistic that they cannot secure pre-lets for the entire redevelopment project, Stockland needs to see more interest demonstrated in the project before ground can be broken.

Typically, developers will seek out interest in any new project before breaking ground and spend time negotiating with contractors, but Lindsay commented that this process is simply taking more time due to the current depressed economic climate.

In the meantime, Stockland has fully stripped out the buildings’ interiors, thus once contractors are given the go ahead the buildings are prepared for demolition so new structures can be erected.

Simply put, Stockland has asked to be shown the potential money before they invest any more cash into the project.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 6:17 am and is filed under Biz Ops, Plugging Things, The Commercial Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.