Lendlease close to the sale of Santa Giulia to Bizzi & Partners

It is one of Milan's largest, and most talked-about, real estate developments, started in 2004 and not yet completed. The story of Milano Santa Giulia began in the 2000s with Luigi Zunino and has come to the present day amidst land reclamation and troubled works, changes of ownership and buildings that have instead been completed. Among these is the Arena that hosted hockey in the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and is now owned by the Germans of Eventim. On the horizon, not so far away, yet another handover could be preparing for the Rogoredo area.

For months now, rumours have been circulating that the Australian group Lendlease, the current owner, is planning to gradually leave Europe, with the exception of London, in order to concentrate capital and investments in Australia.

According to market rumours, the remaining development of the Santa Giulia area would be bought by Bizzi & Partners, a real estate development company headed by Davide Bizzi, who would thus return to deal with a vast area to be redeveloped after bidding farewell to Milanosesto in 2018 when he sold the former Falck area project to the consortium then formed by Hines and Prelios. Some knots remain to be unravelled regarding the sale. Bizzi & Partners has made a binding offer, for which it would have obtained an extension and on which Lendlease would be making the final assessments. The lead bank would reportedly be Intesa Sanpaolo, but Middle Eastern capital would also be involved, at a time when the war launched by the US against Iran is dangerously widening. Should the operation go through, the Sgr called to manage the fund in which the areas would be located is, again according to the rumours, Paolo Bottelli's Kryalos.

At the moment, the total area that can still be built on is about 385 thousand square metres, of which residential for more than 277 thousand square metres, for a total of 3 thousand flats, retail for 59 thousand square metres, offices for 30,657 square metres, and finally hospitality for the remaining 17,500 square metres, in addition to 200 thousand square metres of green space. The areas are said to be valued at around 450 million euro, and according to rumours the total development costs (including urbanisation and land reclamation) would come to 1.8 billion. Proof that Lendlease also wants to leave the country is the mandate initiated to sell some already realised properties such as the Spark 1 and 2 offices now leased to Saipem.

The project still to be developed has a total lead time of eight to nine years and the complete development will be carried out in lots. The reclamation and urbanisation will take four years to complete, while the already reclaimed areas will be developed in approximately four years, with the result that the completion date for the last lots will most likely be 2035.