Developer to partner government on 751 acre science campus

Goodman is close to securing a 751 acre science park development in Oxfordshire.

Three government bodies are close to appointing Goodman as preferred partner to bring commercial expertise to grow and redevelop the existing Science and Innovation Campus at Harwell.

It is thought that Goodman has beaten competition from Quantum, the joint venture set up by Morley and Quintain to invest in science parks, which is working on the £300m SPark near Bristol.

Park owners the UK Atomic Energy Authority, the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Health Protection Agency have been seeking a partner since last summer to create a focal point for UK science and research on the site.

Harwell is already home to world-leading research organisations. The £500m of investment in scientific facilities on the site in the last decade features the Diamond Light Synchrotron, the UK’s largest investment in science for 30 years, comprising a series of super-microscopes, and ISIS, the world’s largest pulsed neutron source.

In the 1990s the government decided to transform the park from a government research centre it began life as RAF Harwell and became the UK’s civil nuclear research centre – into a leading centre of science and technology business.

A source said the government wanted a commercial partner to revamp old buildings and develop new buildings, totalling up to 1m sq ft, although no plans were finalised at this stage.

In its Science and Innovation Investment Framework 2004-2014, published in 2006, the government said it had set up the Science and Technology Facilities Council ‘to create a more integrated approach to large facilities, including international negotiations, to obtain more value from the knowledge and technologies developed by the new Council, and to take forward the development of the two national science and innovation campuses at Harwell and Daresbury.’

Goodman is also developing 500,000 sq ft of research and development space at Colworth Park in Bedfordshire with Unilever, where it will invite smaller food science-related companies to create a research community.

CB Richard Ellis is advising. All parties declined to comment.