business focus
Howbery Business Park celebrates its 25th anniversary
Not every business park can boast a historic manor house surrounded by legacy trees and an estate which can be traced back to the 15th century, but then Howbery Park is proud to be a business park with a difference. Located just outside Wallingford in South Oxfordshire, the park has come a long way in its 25 years.
Today Howbery Park is home to over 50 different businesses, ranging from family enterprises to large organisations. The park’s diverse range of businesses creates a unique park community. Howbery Park also has a long-standing water science and technology cluster which continues to grow.
We spoke to estates manager Donna Bowles, to find out about the significant milestones in Howbery Park’s development
The Environment Agency (EA), known at the time as the National Rivers Authority, became the park’s first tenant in 1994, occupying several small buildings across the park. The EA is now one of the site’s major occupiers in state-of-the-art 35,000 sq ft Red Kite House which opened in 2005, and which was awarded Best Bespoke Office Development outside Central London, in the same year.
Four years later, a second BREAAM Excellent-rated building, Kestrel House, was built to mirror Red Kite House for park landlord HR Wallingford, the former government-owned Hydraulics Research Station. With each of these new buildings, the aim was to show a model of best practice in sustainable office development. Both building projects demonstrated that a small increase in building costs could result in significantly- reduced carbon emissions and greater efficiency, while at the same time creating light and well-ventilated working environments for their occupants.
Red Kite House and Kestrel House incorporate a number of different sustainable features. These include a rain- water storage system which collects surface water from
Kestrel House Donna Bowles
the roof to recycle it, and a cooling system which works by extracting water from a borehole before returning it to the River Thames.
In 2011, Howbery Park became the UK’s first solar- powered business park. The adjacent solar farm (not
52
businessmag.co.uk
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – JULY/AUGUST 2019
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
