Macfarlanes advises Legal & General on £100m riverside investment in Sunderland

The investment will fund the development of up to 300,000 sq ft of Grade A office space including the new Sunderland City Hall. Under the terms of the deal, Legal & General will build three new office buildings on the site of the former Vaux Brewery, which will form the centrepiece of the wider mixed-use Riverside Sunderland development.

This deal forms part of Legal & General’s Future Cities business, which has already invested around £1bn in regeneration and development projects in cities such as Cardiff, Bristol, Bath, Leeds, Manchester, Oxford and Newcastle. Macfarlanes has advised on a large proportion of these.  

The Macfarlanes team for this matter was led by real estate partner Dominic Cunliffe with assistance from senior real estate solicitors Jim Roberts and Florien Stone, real estate solicitor Sindhuja Shriananda, senior construction solicitor Bethan Ellis-Jones, and senior tax solicitor Sarah Shucksmith.

Dominic Cunliffe comments: “We are pleased to have supported Legal & General in connection with the forward funding of their latest government-let development, which is a very significant speculative development commitment and a watershed vote of confidence in Sunderland and the North East.”