Shopping centre to go on market for £10m
Alice Cunningham/BBCA shopping and leisure centre is being sold for £10m - a fifth of its last sale price - as its current owner looks to diversify its investment portfolio, it has been announced.
The Buttermarket in Ipswich town centre opened in 1992 and is currently home to shops such as TK Maxx, New Look, Grape Tree as well as the Omniplex cinema, bowling and gaming centre, and restaurants.
According to the centre, its footfall was up by 1.3% in 2025 with several of the tenants re-signing leases.
Centre manager, Rebecca Bird, believed the sale represented a "massive new opportunity" for future owners.
The centre was sold in 2015 for £9.2m to Drum Property Group.
Two years later it was sold to the current owner National Grid Pension Fund for £54.7m following a revamp of the centre.
"This is a really positive thing for Ipswich and represents a massive new opportunity for new owners," she explained.
"There's so much untapped potential in the Buttermarket, and with the right vision and ambition, the new owners can take what's been started here to its full potential."
Bird added that the £10m figure was a "representation of changes in climate".
"It reflects retail property values, changes in local areas, changes and continued increases in business rates – that's a massive thing that impacts big units," she said.
Alice Cunningham/BBCTK Maxx, New Look, Grape Tree and Deesigner Hair have all recently re-signed their leases, according to the centre, which Bird said was a sign they were committed to Ipswich.
The centre's former Superdry store has also played host as a temporary pop-up venue for local artist Lily Hammond, an Ipswich Town poster exhibition and Suffolk's charity hares sculpture trail.
A spokesperson for the Buttermarket said its sale was being managed by Cushman & Wakefield commercial real estate agents.
Sailmakers, the other shopping centre in the town, formerly called Tower Ramparts, was previously up for auction in 2024 and sold for £3.02m.
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