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Partnership has helped Bell Plantation Garden Centre expand and achieve vision of becoming ‘retail and leisure destination’

A family garden centre which has developed into a hugely popular ‘retail and leisure destination’ over the past decade has hailed the ability of the CambridgeHOK team to deliver their long-term vision.

Bell Plantation Garden Centre, in Towcester, Northamptonshire, first called on the expertise of the CambridgeHOK team back in 2012, having drawn up plans for a major expansion.

Since then, six separate projects have been completed together, with CambridgeHOK sales manager Noel O’Leary becoming a familiar face at the centre, having worked on and overseen each development and expansion.

Long-term planning essential for evolving site

Long-term planning and foresight has been a key element of the consultancy role provided, ensuring new portal frame buildings and glass canopies have been adaptable to convert into indoor retail space, as and when required.

“I’m immensely proud of this project. We have grown and grown the site and we can go back and look at the original plans and see how it’s developed,” said Mr O’Leary.

“It has involved a lot of forward thinking, always considering what needed to be built to enable it to be easier changed in the future, hence like the portal canopy which we recently changed on the last project we did, to change it to an indoor retail space.

“It is really about sitting down with the client, understanding what the future may be, and then designing the building so that we can adapt and move with them, so that as they grow, the building can grow, without having to lift it or move it or adapt it greatly so they can extend it.

“It’s really been about having a little bit of foresight to enable us to assist them in their growth. It’s all about communication, looking at the plans, and developing from there.”

Continuity and partnership key to success

Jethro Warren, development manager at Bell Plantation, says the continuity offered by the CambridgeHOK team has been influential in ensuring the successful development of the site.

“CambridgeHOK have really helped us grow. We’ve had a really good consistent partnership with them,” said.

“We’re not developers, we’re not experts in the field at all, but we do know what we want, we are practical people and we like to think we should be able to understand the process.

“We’ve worked with Noel since the start. I think he showed up one day and met my dad and talked metal buildings and we’ve had him ever since, and that consistency has been great for us.

“We’ve had the same guys on site and just one change of project manager in all the time we’ve been working with HOK. It just builds trust, it means that we can give good feedback, they understand our requirements in great detail and that consistency throughout has made our lives easier,” he said.

“They have always also been competitively priced too, so they have never taken that relationship for granted. That’s why it has continued for so many years. We’re really happy with the buildings we love being in them and retailing from them. They are simple and effective.”

A great showcase of expertise

Now, plans are afoot for further expansion, and another collaboration to ensure the business continues to thrive, and Mr O’Leary believes Bell Plantation is the ultimate showcase of CambridgeHOK’s skills and expertise.

“It’s a really important facility for us because it shows off all our potential from steel frames to glass buildings,” he said.

“At CambridgeHOK, as far as any contracts like this are concerned, we can come to a field and from that stage take it all the way through, whether you are selling products like this, or we are growing in a glasshouse, we truly offer the full turnkey operation from planning, all the way through to delivery.

“I think some customers don’t want to go out and get the architects and the planning consultants and others involved, what they want is somebody to take that pressure away from them.

“Now, because of the amount of people that are within CambridgeHOK, and the different expertise levels that we have, whether it be from civil engineering to design and build to drawing to manufacturing, we have that all under one roof, which I think really makes CambridgeHOK quite different to most other companies.”

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