The M2CityLink, an industrial and commercial development on the Medway City Estate, sets a new standard for high-quality industrial and trade counter accommodation for local and national businesses. Its accessibility to the M2, rail services, and ports make it an exceptional location for expanding on the already 2 million sq ft of space and 4,500+ employees.
Tetra Tech helped new landowner Location 3 Properties obtain planning permission from Medway Council on this 132,000-sq ft mixed-use development, featuring 8 trade counter accommodation units.
Image courtesy of Location3 Properties
Having already supported the site for a decade, obtaining planning permission for a food store and helping a retail operator dispose of the site, Tetra Tech made an ideal candidate for this scheme.
Establishing a case for this development rested on highlighting the unmet need for high-quality employment space. Alongside this, the scheme provided a great opportunity to accommodate a range of sui-generis operations from auto-centres, plumbers and builders’ merchants, to tyre sales, tile and bathroom supplies, and much more.
Yet, to ensure this development would gain planning permission, we had to overcome a range of technical issues affecting development, including impact on heritage assets across the estuary at Chatham Docks, ecology constraints associated with the creek, and accessibility to the site.
Although on the edge of the Medway City Estate, the site itself was not allocated in the development plan for industrial use. From initial pre-application meetings to achieving permission, Tetra Tech cooperated closely with the Medway Council to secure permission on a tight timescale of just three months to meet the client’s contractual needs.
Working with a wider consultant team, including Tetra Tech’s own ecology services, we secured a unanimous vote in favour of the scheme from the council.
Occupation is scheduled for summer 2021.
