Intu Milton Keynes taken over by new owner of its Merry Hill mall

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 28, 2020

Intu Milton Keynes is the latest shopping centre belonging to the failed malls giant to change hands with the property having been taken over by a new asset manager, Ellandi.

While Ellandi will ultimately control the asset, the centre will be run on a day-to-day basis by Savills. The ownership change will also see it being rebranded eventually, the new owner’s co-founder, Morgan Garfield, said.

It won’t be the first name change as the mall originally opened in 2000 and was known as Midsummer Place.

Ellandi has major interests in UK shopping centres with 25 others in its portfolio, including sites in Dartford in Kent, Kettering in Northamptonshire and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. And importantly, its portfolio also includes the recently acquired Intu Merry Hill in the West Midlands.

Intu went into administration earlier this year as it struggled under the weight of its heavy debt load and the coronavirus crisis presented a major stumbling block in refinancing that debt. 

Its shopping centres continued to operate, but some individual sites have since been hived off, a consequence of the way that Intu Properties was structured. It acted as a parent company with its individual shopping centres being operated by separate firms under the Intu umbrella. That saw different centres being used as security for different loans.

Despite the parent company’s problems, its malls are among the most attractive in the UK and major retailers continue to operate stores there, as well as others planning new ones. Harrods, for instance, has only recently opened its big new standalone premium beauty store at Lakeside. And Next is also planning to open premium beauty stores in former Debenhams sites at Intu malls, one of them at Milton Keynes.