Recently in West End Category

The Daily Telegraph gets quite excited this morning over a deal done by  American private equity group  Bain Capital  to take 37 000 sq ft of space in Devonshire House for £90 sq ft.  This is pretty much the same deal as the one reported by EG in July 2008 as being nearly done at £120 sq ft.

Presumably that deal fell apart after the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September. Maybe because everyone got very scared: but maybe because Lehman had an interest in the former headquarters of Land Securities?

In March 2007 Lehman's backed the purchase fronted by American Steven Witkoff and DCD partners to buy the 190 000 sq ft block by Green Park tube station from Land Securities at a 4% yield. How Land Securities must have laughed. Three months after becoming a REIT, and no longer subject to CGT, they sell a building owned since 1955 for more than a quarter of a billion.

The 15 year lease has 32 months' rent free says Guy Taylor of C&W who did the deal for Witkoff. So that drags the real rent down to well under £80, even further if you include the free refurbishment being thrown in.  Even so, a good deal that will cheer up West End agents no end: especially perhaps the recently fledged H2SO who are trying to fill 100 000 sq ft for D2 in Savile Row.

Will Witkoff and DCD  be cheered?  A bit, perhaps. But not until the peak of the next cycle will anyone pay 4%. Meanwhile, it would be interesting to know if the administrators of Lehman still have an interest in Devonshire House: because right now the 2007 deal on the former home of the Dukes of Devonshire House is around £100m under water.

Anyone care to raise a Freedom of Information Act request to discover how much the Crown Estate has spend on advice over plans to float off a chunk of the £1.3bn Regent Street Estate? The bill from CBRE alone must be considerable, considering the agent has been giving wise counsel for at least 18 months.

In 2007 it probably felt like a good idea for an organisation forbidden from borrowing to raise maybe £500m. When news of the plans came out in early 2008 the Crown said it would help pay for the Quadrant development at the bottom of Regent Street - where work has now begun. 

The mill-wheels at the Crown grind slowly. The recession poured in grit rather than grist.There was also a fair bit of internal opposition. But insiders say the go-ahead for a Special Purpose Vehicle was to be announced on July 8^th at the Crown's summer reception at Lancaster House on July 8th. It did not happen.

The Crown admits in the FT this morning that the SPV idea has been shelved: but goes on to say "the board remains committed to exploring the opportunities... of raising capital to fund its  investment in Regent Street."  Still spending then?

But how much has been spent so far? Oh, a supplementary question: where is the £500m coming from to pay for the Quadrant project?  Will some family silver have to be sold - or is the programme now to be stretched?

The new US embassy in Nine Elms will be over 300ft tall and has already been dubbed "The Iceberg" by the US Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, which is responsible for the £500m block due to be finished in 2016.  These fresh facts, elaborated upon in today's Standard column ,emerged from the mist at a seminar held by Cushman & Wakefield at their Portman Square offices in London this week.

What also emerged over a beer afterwards is the news that English Heritage has told the Department for Culture Media and Sport that the façade at least of the US embassy in Grosvenor Square "meets the requirements for listing".  That will cut the end value by a nine-figure sum and no doubt irritate the Americans who are hoping to cover the cost of Nine Elms with sales of up to 150 posh flats.

It will now take all the considerable ingenuity of still-not-officially-named development partners Sir Stuart Lipton and Elliott Bernerd to make anything like £500m for the Americans.

A firm of London house builders founded in 2005 seems to have come up with the rather good idea of trying to persuade the London College of Fashion to take 250,000 sq ft of space at NOHO.

Hadley Homes is a surprise contender to buy the old Middlesex Hospital site (pictured left) just north of Oxford Street, according to a report in today's Building magazine.

All will remember the luckless Icelandic bank Kaupthing paying £175m for the now empty three acres at the urging of the Candy Brothers who dreamed of super-luxury flats on the site. That has of course turned into a nightmare for Kaupthing whose liabilities now stand at over £220m.

Hadley wants to use the college as the anchor tenant on a mixed use scheme. But they are up against Stanhope, possibly Helical Bar and even possibly Parkview, the Hong-Kong based business who spent years not developing Battersea. Kaupthing are due to make a final decision shortly. Whoever wins might want to have a chat with the fashonista's.

Does the replacement of Cushman & Wakefield by the green and mean CBRE machine as joint letting agent with CWM on Covent Garden presage some action at last ? 

It is now three years since Liberty International paid £421m for the place and promised to transform the market from dreary tourist trap into a buzzing hive for Londoners. A walk round last week saw few signs of change.

Apple is of course coming - and Liberty promise visible change by this time next year.

What Liberty subsidiary CapCo yearns for, is for Covent Garden to become a fashionable place to eat, drink and shop.

It will be interesting to see if Malcolm Dalgleish's team at CBRE can come up with any better ideas than C&W to "refresh and move ahead" with the plans, as CapCo puts it with some delicacy.