Praxis
Praxis became involved with Kings Hill in December 2024, when we bought a portfolio of 14 office buildings.
Based in London, Praxis is a privately-owned investor and manager of UK real estate. We employ 500 people and have £1.2bn of assets under management, with 1,823 tenants.
We strongly believe in the future of offices and are excited by the opportunity to help regenerate Kings Hill as one of the UK’s premier business parks with our programme of renewal already under way.
Our team provides a full suite of property services in-house, covering asset, property, facilities and project management.
These services enable us to develop strong relationships with our tenants, with a focus on high quality and timely customer service. Cost efficiencies, made possible by our in-house teams, also often result in lower occupier service charges.
Praxis at Kings Hill
Praxis acquired a portfolio of 14 office buildings, totalling 491,860 sq ft, with 61% leased to 37 tenants (301,177 sq ft) and 39% vacant (190,683 sq ft).
Prior to our arrival, several major occupiers had left in recent years driven by a commercial need to reduce their space. Finding replacements has proved impossible as many of the buildings at Kings Hill are more than 25 years old, offering large single open-plan offices, with little or no demand. Due to the building’s design they also require major upgrades to comply with the energy efficiency now required by businesses.
In addition, the Covid pandemic transformed the way we all live and work, and hybrid working has become the norm for millions, resulting in demand weakening for large open plan office space, as offered by Kings Hill.
The demand nowadays is for offices that provide flexible space with high standards of energy performance that reinforce tenants’ environmental credentials.
To date, Praxis has committed nearly £7m to upgrading and remodelling the internal layout of three of the office buildings, with a further £2m of work scheduled to start later this year. We are committed to delivering right-sized offices for companies looking to find the balance between cost-efficiency and employee productivity. Our refurbishment programme is already attracting new tenants and will support the strong flight to quality by occupiers as they look to bring staff back into the office.
Praxis has started work on the refurbishment and renovation to upgrade three of Praxis’ 14 office buildings, to provide business space that will help companies encourage their teams back to the office, rather than work from home. A total of 106,000 sq ft of existing offices will be degassed, with new electric air conditioning and ventilation installed in refurbished areas and zoned to provide a variety of different sized office units.
To meet the demand for flexible business accommodation, the buildings at 10 and 35 Kings Hill Avenue and 30 Tower View are being refurbished to provide Cat-A quality office space with units ranging from 2,000 to 16,000 sq ft.
The 14 office buildings owned by Praxis at Kings Hill.
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Our vision for Kings Hill
For more than 30 years Kings Hill has been the county’s pre-eminent mixed-use development, since Kent County Council partnered with Rouse Kent – later Liberty Property Trust – to transform the former RAF WWII fighter base. Today, Praxis has a vision to repurpose and regenerate the area’s commercial office space for modern working and living.
We believe the best way to achieve this is to focus on a ‘right-sized’ business park offering high quality, modern accommodation, and re-purposing surplus office space land for much-needed new homes.
The proposed development represents an exciting opportunity to utilise partially vacant brownfield sites, in a highly sustainable location within Kings Hill and on sites which have been identified by the Council for residential redevelopment.
