Crown Estate unveils US$6 billion Oxford science park project in the UK

[LONDON] The UK’s Crown Estate, the property company that generates income for King Charles III, has bought a site in Oxfordshire as part of a life sciences development project worth as much as US$6 billion once complete.

The Harwell East site could feature as much as 4.5 million square feet of office, laboratory and advanced manufacturing space and as many as 400 homes, the Crown Estate said in a statement on Tuesday (Oct 21). 

The land sits next to the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, a public-private venture that’s half-owned by Brookfield and already home to more than 200 laboratories, offices and manufacturing facilities.

The Crown Estate has previously committed to investing as much as £1.5 billion (S$2.6 billion) in the science, technology and innovation sectors.

The company is also redeveloping the site of the former Debenhams in Oxford city centre alongside Oxford Science Enterprises, hoping to provide more lab space. It’s also entered into a joint venture with Lendlease, as part of which the pair will develop a mixture of commercial and residential real estate. The estate’s investments chime in with a government pledge to spend billions more on boosting science and technology, with a focus on the area that stretches between Oxford and Cambridge universities.

However, it comes as pharmaceutical companies including Merck and AstraZeneca are pulling out of projects, citing the government’s failure to invest enough in the sector. 

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There is also a large amount of office and lab space about to come onto the Oxford market, equal to 13 per cent of existing stock, according to brokerage firm Bidwells. The biggest site, the Daubney Project at Oxford Science Park, will provide 450,000 square feet of space across three buildings and is due to complete next year. BLOOMBERG