Breaking news: series of 1m sq ft+ warehouses planned for West Midlands

A 170-acre west Midlands site is being lined up for a series of 1m sq ft plus warehouses.

Developer IM Properties is smoothing the path for a site at junction 9 of the M42 motorway, east of Birmingham, which could satisfy unmet demand for mega-warehouses in the West Midlands.

The green field site is expected to be a medium-term development prospect, with sources suggesting a timetable taking development beyond 2019. Planning permission has yet to be obtained.

The site is close to Peddimore, already tipped as a potential urban extension to Birmingham by the area’s local enterprise partnership. This includes 170 acres of employment land and land for 6,000 homes on sites that lie east and west of the A38 Sutton Coldfield Bypass, east of Walmley.

The site is being branded as Junction 9.

Richard Sykes, Planning & Development Manager at IM Properties, said: “We’ve been working on this for a while, because there is a fundamental under supply of good, large, deliverable employment sites in the West Midlands.”

“We could see over 2.5m sq ft of development on this site, and it could fill a big hole in the local supply of land capable of taking units of 1m sq ft or more, because there is demand in that size range but no supply.”

IM Properties are already at work on 500,000 sq ft in five speculative warehouse units in the west Midlands, at Birch Coppice and the Hub, Birmingham.