A leading outdoor equipment specialist is to open its first Southampton outlet after a local investor bought the premises in an off-market deal, national property consultants Lambert Smith Hampton (LSH) has announced today.

Kingsbridge Estates Ltd has acquired a 10,000 sq ft showroom at the junction of Hawkeswood Road and Bitterne Road West for £1.5m following negotiations by LSH.

The site, which fronts the busy A3024, is currently occupied by Towsure Ltd and will soon re-open as outdoor sports and camping retailer Yeomans Outdoor Leisure Ltd.

Yeomans Outdoor Leisure already has more than 70 stores and outlets across the UK. The Southampton store will be its first in Hampshire.

Jerry Vigus, director of capital markets at the LSH South Coast office in Southampton, said: “This site is on one of the busiest roads in and out of the eastern side of Southampton and is a great location for a retailer.

“We were aware of discussions between the previous tenants and Yeomans Outdoors and we were able to structure a sale for Kingsbridge Estates.”

Mark Hooper, estates director at Chichester-based Kingsbridge Estates, a commercial property management and development company, said the acquisition was made as part of its focus to buy prime sites in the area.

“This is a high quality site that we know will work very well within our property portfolio,” he said. “LSH undertook the negotiations and we are very happy with how the transaction was managed.”

Paul Drake, of Yeomans Outdoor Leisure, said “We’re very excited to bring the Yeomans brand to Southampton and believe this site will be ideal for a store because it has plenty of space for us to display large items such as our range of tents,” he added.

The detached freehold property, which was built in 1990, has a ground floor showroom, workshop, offices and customer toilets, with the first floor predominantly showroom space with storage and further office space.

The property amounts to 21,934 sq ft on a site of about 0.93 acres. There is also an extensive service and parking area with 64 spaces.

It stands in a prominent location adjoining Centurion Business Park, a busy industrial and trade park just north of Northam Bridge, just ¾ mile from Southampton city centre. There is good access to the M27 and the adjoining M3 provides links to London, Brighton and Bournemouth.

Kingsbridge Estates are actively looking for similar opportunities and are prepared to be flexible to work with tenants and property owners.

LSH is a national commercial property consultancy that works with investors, developers and occupiers across the public and private sectors, and it is single-mindedly focused on UK and Irish property markets.