October 2009 Archives

Park Plaza are planning on opening their first hotel in London under the Art'otel brand. The hotel situated at the junction of Old Street, Rivington Street and Great Eastern Street will be 18-storeys, and will have space for 350 bedrooms. In addition, a modern top-floor restaurant and bar as well as a relaxing spa open to guests and the local public, will form part of the hotel's offering. There will also be a publically accessible arts centre, which will include an art gallery. There are already 3 Art'otels in Berlin, and 1 in each of Budapest and Dresden with others planned for Cologne, Marrakech and Amsterdam. Scott Brownrigg are working on the plans and a scoping opinion was submitted to Tower Hamlets recently.

When completed next year One Hyde Park will offically become 100 Knightsbridge. Consultation with royal mail and the emergency services have said the name could could cause confusion even though it has been marketed to the super rich as One Hyde Park over the last couple of years. The Candy brothers flagship development still has around 40 flats unsold and is due to fully complete towards the end of 2010.

Plans for 1,643 residential units as well as 44,938sqm gross of B1 office space has been submitted to Tower Hamlets from developer Millharbour LLP with architects Foster + Partners. In all 9 buildings are proposed with the tallest being at 46 storeys. The majority of the units will be for the private market, 1,351 in all with just 292 going towards social rented. The site is 2 seperate parcels of land one to the south and one to the west of the recently completed Pan Peninsula. This scheme will be known as Millharbour East and Millharbour West and marks a huge densification on the previous plans for the area which have gradually increased in scope and ambition since the Millennium Quarter first surfaced. An image of the proposal is shown below and the application can be viewed here.

If you go down the fashionable end of Oxford Street today you'll be struck by two things. One is that the Christmas lights are now up, despite the fact that we're still on BST (apparently Sainsburys in High Holborn have been selling Christmas decorations for the last month, thanks Tony) the other is that there's a great big gap on the south side where 467-471 Oxford Street used to be.

This is LandSec's Park House development, lots of office (230,000+ sq ft), lots of retail (nearly 120,000 sq ft) and just a smattering of resi (36 units). All this is set to kick off (or should we say re-start) next year. In the interim, however, the developers still intend to generate some income from the plot. This week LandSec was granted permission for "large entertainment uses" on the site, one of these uses will be an ice rink, how very Christmassy.

I pass this site every day, but had no idea that this:

 Looks like this on the inside:

Regarded by English Heritage as the second most important modern building in London this is of course the Commonwealth Institute on Kensington High Street. The institute is really two buildings, the event and museum space or "The Tent" as it's usually called (pictured above) and the more mundane admin buildings. 

Chelsfield Partners and the Ilchester Estate recently (mid September) gained planning permission to redevelop the site. The Tent stays and will be the new home to the Design Museum, but the admin blocks are going, to be replaced by 62 resi units. As sites go this is on a par with the Phillimores, the Westcity Holdings/Northacre development which completed in 2004 just up the road. That one sticks in my mind for two reasons, one is that the parking spaces were being sold for £100,000 a pop, the other was that the brochure for the development was made out of mahogany and cost £125. This is super prime territory. 

Not property related but spotted this on my way back from Saltaire (Titus Salt's model village for the workers, so I guess sort of property related) this weekend. This is Leeds city centre, and this is way, way too early for Christmas decorations...

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