Building work begins at The Lampworks

Insider Media

Building work has begun on a key residential scheme in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. The Lampworks, in Harford Street, is a build-to-rent (BTR) development providing 148 apartments. It is Hungarian-owned Cordia UK’s first BTR project and will feature A and B EPC-rated homes, making it one of Birmingham’s greenest residential projects.  The Lampworks is part of an ambitious redevelopment by Cordia of a large part of the Jewellery Quarter’s Great Hampton Street area. This includes the city's first shared living scheme, Bradford Works, which will contain 54 self-contained micro-apartments with communal spaces including lounges, kitchens, dining areas and workspaces.   The company yesterday (TUES) held a ceremony marking the commencement of building work on The Lampworks, which included the burying of a time capsule.

Transcript

00:00Hello, I'm Ian Griffin, Deputy Editor of Midlands Business Insider, and I'm here in the Jewelry

00:14Quarter, Great Hampton Street, at the site of the Lamp Works Build-to-Rent scheme. 148

00:20apartments are going to be built here by Cordia UK. They'll be completed in 2026. I've just

00:27seen a ceremony where a time capsule has been put underground on the site by some of the

00:32senior executives at Cordia, and it was also announced by them of a new social shared housing

00:39scheme, which will be 100% affordable. More than 50 units will be built there. So a lot

00:48of great investment going on by Cordia, Cordia UK, in the Jewelry Quarter. Let's hear what

00:55some of the senior executives from the company had to say. So I'm Gabor Futo. I'm the co-founder

01:01and main shareholder of Futurial Group, which is the parent company of Cordia. Our activities are

01:09across seven different countries. We used to come from Hungary. We came from Hungary, but then

01:15expanded to Poland, Romania, Spain, now the UK, and also Germany and the United States. We have

01:23investments in all these countries, a headcount of around 600 people, and we have finished around

01:32200 projects across these countries on maybe 20 million square foot. My name is András Karpády.

01:41I'm the CEO of Cordia UK, and we're here today on the site of the Lampworks, which is our very

01:47first built-to-rent scheme here in Birmingham. It will be 148 modern apartments with a specific

01:53focus on energy efficiency, providing the most energy efficient apartments in the city with only

01:57high B and A EPC rated apartments. Our lifeblood has been urban regeneration. We grew up on it.

02:05Our first project was what was later to become the largest urban regeneration project in

02:10Central Eastern Europe. So I personally have been working on it for almost two decades,

02:14and this teaches you actually how to create, how to change the city, how to create

02:21an urban revolution, and how to create lasting value for the society and obviously to the built environment.

02:28It is a pretty special occasion that we're here for, the foundation stone laying

02:34ceremony of the building. This is a Hungarian tradition where our group comes from. We lower

02:39a time capsule in the foundation with some notes and messages from our partners and colleagues

02:44and friends that will stay here hopefully for many generations. We got excited about coming

02:49to the UK, especially the living sector, because there's such a shortage of available housing

02:59and the population is growing and the planning has been extremely difficult. So new projects

03:06never really, the number of new projects never really reach that target that each government

03:11successfully or unsuccessfully, but consecutively set out. We believe that the housing

03:17sector should be attacked from different directions, so one of them is rentals. Even though

03:23our company's history is more like built to sell, and we have sold over 10,000 apartments

03:29historically, but we think that for the UK, built to rent is the future and this asset class

03:35is institutionalizing more and more capital will come in and create this much more affordable

03:42offering. But we're also excited about social housing. We have purchased two social housing,

03:48two registered providers of social housing, Oksésia Homes and St. Arthur Homes, and through those we

03:53are providing shared ownership and also affordable rentals. The project hasn't been easy to get

03:59started. Some difficulties over the last 12-18 months that I'm sure everybody has experienced,

04:04but we're very confident that it is now on the right track and we're very much looking forward

04:08to handing over this outstanding scheme mid-2026. The other reason why we've come together here

04:15today is the introduction to the market of our new shared living concept, which is essentially

04:22an HMO based but a BTR institutionally managed new accommodation type for a very large demographic

04:29between student accommodation and built to rent that are looking for affordable, energy efficient,

04:35modern homes in the city center. And we believe this demographic to be quite a large target group

04:40just in the Midlands, post-grad students, freelancers, young professionals who are out

04:45of student homes but not yet into BTR or buying their own apartments. We have a little bit of

04:51perspective having operations in seven countries and the UK is unique in its difficulty to get

04:59planning. So I think this is the major issue. It's also unique because the population is growing

05:05and the housing demand is probably bigger than any other country where we operate, but at the same

05:10time the supply is constrained. So I think that the uniqueness of the country is in this imbalance

05:19and also the positive uniqueness of the country is that the planning regime really cares

05:25about creating social housing and it's designed in a way that is not segregating but more

05:31integrating the society. So whereas in other cities you find that if you cannot afford

05:37housing you must be living in the suburbs, in the UK most of the areas you will only get a permit if

05:4410, 20 or 30 percent of the units are affordable social housing or belong to one of these

05:53social tenures. So I think this is a brilliant structure. It is very very good for the long-term

05:59coherence of the society but what needs to be sorted out I think is mostly the planning

06:06and once it's on I think the UK's housing sector is looking forward to a very bright future.

06:13So I'm pleased to announce that we've received planning permission from Birmingham City Council

06:18for our first inaugural HMO concept which is a shared living scheme called Bradford Works

06:23which will be 54 apartments just around the corner from here, 54 micro apartments, about 27 square

06:29meters on average size, fully EPCA rated, fully all-inclusive rents including all utility bills,

06:37council tax, Wi-Fi and even this way it will be about 20 percent cheaper than a bill to rent

06:43one bedroom apartment. So we're very excited to launch this new project. We're starting on it as

06:48soon as early 2025. It will be a refurbishment of an existing jewellery corridor asset. We're very

06:53keen on reducing our embedded carbon footprint and also to preserve existing assets in the

06:59jewellery corridor and keeping with the neighbourhood character and the conservation area.

07:03So we're hoping to bring some more good news over the course of the next months

07:07but thank you for the opportunity to share this.

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