A landmark building in Glasgow city centre has been acquired by a joint venture between Manchester-headquartered Bruntwood and Legal & General for more than £16m.
The 14-storey Met Tower has been snapped up by Bruntwood SciTech for £16.2m from Osborne+Co.
The building has been vacant since 2014 and is Grade B listed.
READ MORE: Boohoo profits slump by more than £110m because of Covid costs and return rates rise
Bruntwood SciTech has also unveiled a £30m transformation project for the building to become a new hub for tech and digital businesses.
The joint venture already owns buildings in Birmingham, Cambridge, Cheshire, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and Oxford.
Its campuses include Alderley Park, Innovation Birmingham, Manchester Science Park, ID Manchester, Platform in Leeds and Melbourn Science Park.
Bruntwood SciTech said Met Tower will become a hub where university spin-outs, start-ups, scale-ups and large tech businesses can "co-locate together and benefit from being in an innovative, collaborative tech cluster".
It added the building will offer 113,000 sq ft of co-working, serviced and leased office space as well as a shared breakout space on the ground floor, showers, lockers, secure cycle store and sports kit drying room plus a rooftop lounge.
If planning permission is granted, work is expected to start later this year and be complete in 2024.
Kate Lawlor, chief executive of Bruntwood SciTech, said: "Glasgow has one of Europe’s most exciting, diverse tech and digital clusters with exceptional higher education institutions and clinical assets.
"Met Tower is in a brilliant location for these types of businesses and is perfectly placed to help create a hub in which they can scale, co-innovate and thrive.
"Glasgow’s science and tech sector is rapidly growing, having seen some of the highest growth in the whole of the UK in the past two years, and now makes up 28% of all jobs in the city.
"As a result it has retained its position in the top three leading tech cities in the UK outside of London.
"Our investment in Glasgow is for the long term, and as we’ve demonstrated in our other cities, we are committed to becoming embedded and driving forwards the growth of the knowledge economy and economic impact of the sector both in Glasgow and other parts of Scotland. This is our first in hopefully several brilliant projects in the country."
OakNorth Bank supported Bruntwood SciTech with the acquisition of Met Tower with a £8.6m acquisition loan and an agreement to provide up to £27m of additional funding to support the subsequent redevelopment of the building.
Ryden, Brodies and Addleshaw Goddard advised Bruntwood SciTech and Pinsents advised OakNorth on the transaction. Savills and DLA represented Osborne+Co.
