Lend Lease subsidiary wins A$100m parking PPP

Capella Capital, a subsidiary of Australian property developer Lend Lease, has been named preferred bidder to construct a 3000-bay multi-deck car park at the Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre, near Perth.

The government of Western Australia has selected Lend Lease-subsidiary Capella Capital as preferred bidder for an A$100 million (€74.9 million; $107 million) public-private partnership (PPP) to build a new car park at a hospital site.

The project involves the construction of a new 3000-bay car park at the Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre site in Perth, and the management of 2000 existing bays, according to Capella’s website.  Capella is the sponsor of the Capella Parking consortium, which also includes Probuild as the builder and Ezipark as the operator of the car park.

Western Australia Treasurer Christian Porter said in a statement that the project would be delivered under a build-own-operate and transfer model, and that assets would be transferred back to the hospital trust at the end of the contract term.

Lend Lease formed Capella in 2009 in conjunction with a group of former executives of Babcock & Brown. Capella focuses on bidding on PPPs for social infrastructure, transportation, water and renewable energy projects in Australia and New Zealand.

Lend Lease is also considering expansion into infrastructure fund management, executives from the company previously told Infrastructure Investor, with Capella Capital as a source of potential infrastructure deals in Australia.

Lend Lease, which trades on the Australian Securities Exchange, also announced today that it had expanded into the Queensland infrastructure market through another of its subsidiaries. Abigroup, a construction and engineering company which Lend Lease acquired last year as part of its A$1.06 billion acquisition of Bilfinger Berger’s Australian construction unit Valemus, has been awarded a A$100 million contract for a rolling stock facility in Queensland.

Steve McCann, chief executive of Lend Lease, said in a statement that the expansion into Queensland rail “strengthens the Group’s position in the growth market of infrastructure”.

Lend Lease, which has over 18,000 employees globally, has about A$10.7 billion in funds under management, according to the company’s website.