THE ailing Castle Place shopping centre in Wiltshire’s county town, Trowbridge, has been sold for £534,000 to a mystery telephone bidder.
It went up for sale for the third time this year in a public online auction through commercial auctioneers Acuitus.
They sold the covered shopping centre in Market Street in just 11 minutes to a telephone bidder whose name was undisclosed.
The property was sold for a lot less than the £1.1 million that it fetched in May when it was sold prior to auction.
Donna Stephens, who has managed the centre for the past seven years, declined to comment.
She is expecting to receive a phone call later this week to tell her who the mystery buyer is.
Bidding started at £350,000 and the buyer will be expected to complete the purchase within the next six weeks.
The centre was listed as Lot 16 in the Acuitus auction after being put up for sale by fund manager Nexus Properties Ltd when negotiations fell through with two previous would-be buyers.
The guide price was raised by £50,000 to £450,000 and Castle Place was described as a substantial 70,469 sq. ft. centre as having “development potential”.
Castle Place was initially sold for around £1.1m prior to an online auction on May 18 after attracting interest from more than 100 parties.
It went for nearly three times its guide price of £400,000 to local developer David Campbell, of Belgravia 17 Investments Ltd, who failed to complete the purchase.
Castle Place was listed for sale by Acuitus at £400,000 for the second time on September 21 and was withdrawn prior to the auction taking place but the sale didn't go through.
The current gross income is approximately £241,081 per annum but it is known that some of the existing tenants are several months in arrears with their rent payments.
Sitting on a prominent 1.73-acre site on Market Street, Castle Place is currently managed by APAM UK Ltd but this may change in the next few months.
Surviving tenants have been unsettled by delays in the sale being completed and by large store closures in recent months, including Wilko’s, Shaws the Drapers, Mainlys hardware store, SK Fruit & Veg and a McColl’s convenience shop.
The 6,546 square metres covered centre was built in 1974 and has 475 car parking spaces, as well as a market hall.
It occupies a prominent and strategic town centre location linking Market Street to St Stephen’s Place Leisure Park and is ripe for redevelopment potential.
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