DIRECTORS of Cellhire plc, the hugely-growing York-based leader in mobile communication rentals, today celebrated a £1.7 million investment - by getting the key to the door of Park House, new offices just built amidst the sculptured greenery at the former Clifton Hospital site.

Completion of the deal for a new national HQ coincides exactly with the announcement that Cellhire has now signed a lease for a new office in Paris, adding to its other outposts in the City of London, Manchester and Glasgow.

Five years ago the head office and sales staff of Cellhire were rattling around like peas in a bucket when they occupied 6,700sq ft of Queen's House, Micklegate. Even then, Tim Williams, founder chairman and managing director, was expecting rapid growth and he got it.

Now there are 73 staff crowded into the offices with four more people being recruited and the three-storey freehold purchase entailing 12,000sq ft at Clifton is all the more necessary because of future growth plans.

Where turnover last year was £4.4 million, generating a pre-tax profit of £452,000, group sales forecast for the year ending next month is around £7 million.

Apart from a broad spectrum of corporate hire of its 4,500 mobile phones, including international satellite phone link-ups, the company is well-known for providing instant communications links at big events.

It supplied many of the media communications links which brought the funeral of Diana into people's homes last year.

Paul Rebeiro, Cellhire's finance director, said: "Moving in to our new HQ begins now and we're doubly thrilled because as we were presented with the keys, we heard that the Paris office deal has been sealed.

"It is no accident that we are opening there on the eve of World Cup football in France and we are negotiating right now with French providers of television time for a regular supply of rented Vodaphones."

The arrival of Cellhire marks a defining moment in the long history of planning wrangling on the 65-acre site so diligently planted out and tended by patients of the now-closed Clifton Hospital for the mentally ill.

Planners have released only 17 of those green belt acres at that northern point of the A19 and half of this is being developed by York-based Persimmon, which plans a total of 103 houses. The first 36 have been built, and roughly half the second phase, still being constructed, have been pre-sold. The third and final phase starts in July.

The other half of the site has outline consent for 120,000sq ft of offices. A commercial phase on the Shipton Road frontage has already been built by Leeds developer Henry Lax Ltd. Bass Taverns, which bought a parcel of the land, has opened the Dormouse pub and a 49-bedroom Holiday Inn Express is due to open at the end of April.

A second phase includes 48,000sq ft of offices on land sold by Henry Lax to Helmsley Acceptances, headed up by John Reeves. It was his organisation which developed the Genesis Science Park.

The three-storey block soon to be occupied by Cellhire is the first phase of four 12,000sq ft blocks built by Malton-based Harrisons Construction.

DTZ Debenham Thorpe, the York commercial property advisers, have been involved with the former Clifton Hospital site for 10 years, firstly as advisers to the Yorkshire Regional health Authority (later the NHS Executive) and later when the company was instructed to sell the whole site in 1994. DTZ's Richard Peak said: "We are now marketing hard for the remainder of the buildings which will be completed in May and already we are in detailed discussions with an organisation interested in leasing one of the buildings."

The third phase of office development will take place on the site of the recently burned-out main hospital building and this should be completed in three years time.

Paul Murphy, chief executive of York's Inward Investment Board, is hoping to attract outside organisations to set up bases there.

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