This Week's London Deal Sheet
The Deal Sheet is a weekly compilation of Greater London and beyond's biggest leases, sales, financing deals, construction updates and personnel moves. Have news you’d like to submit? Email mark.faithfull@bisnow.com.
Canadian pension fund Oxford Properties and life sciences specialist Pioneer Group have launched plans to convert Victoria House in Bloomsbury Square, central London, into a life sciences hub. The project has secured full planning approval, and Oxford and Pioneer Group have also announced that Victoria House will be the new home of the BioIndustry Association, the trade association for UK life sciences.
Victoria House is a Grade II-listed building, which boasts a neoclassical facade with internal art deco features. It was designed and constructed in the 1920s for its former owner-occupier, the Liverpool Victoria Building Society, and served as its head office until 1996. Oxford and Pioneer Group plan to convert 220K SF of the building’s 300K SF internal area into wet lab-enabled life sciences space. The project is on track to achieve BREEAM Excellent certification and is targeting an EPC A energy rating.
Victoria House will also feature a fully fitted incubator and grow-on space; 80K SF of office, amenity, meeting and retail spaces; an eighth-floor club lounge; and a roof terrace overlooking central London. The building is due for completion in autumn 2024.
LEASING
GPE has announced that VF Corp., which trades as outdoor clothing brand The North Face, has signed a lease to expand its global flagship, located at Walmar House, 288-300 Regent St. in the West End. The clothing brand’s new space comprises approximately 10K SF across the ground and basement floors, which will increase its retail footprint by 33%.
The North Face has traded successfully at GPE’s Walmar House site since 2015. VF Corp. has committed The North Face brand to a 10-year lease.
Further south on Regent Street, British contemporary designer fashion brand Joseph has also signed a lease for a new store located at Kingsland House at 124 Regent St. This lease signing completes the repositioning of the retail offering at Kingsland and Carrington House and follows TUMI, Russell & Bromley, Pret a Manger and The Body Shop completing new leases with GPE last year. This will be Joseph's sixth London standalone store.
FINANCE
Goodstone Living has secured £100M of debt financing and appointed a construction partner to support the delivery of the UK’s largest modular build-to-rent residential community in Birmingham.
The debt financing, provided by NatWest and Allied Irish Bank, will support the development of a 4.2-acre island site in Birmingham’s creative quarter known as Digbeth.
Smith’s Garden will comprise 550 rental homes centred around more than an acre of private garden — one of the largest in central Birmingham. Other amenities include a coworking space, fitness centre and creche. Construction is scheduled to complete in 2025.
Goodstone Living will reduce embodied carbon emissions during construction by more than 30% (versus the Royal Institute of British Architects or RIBA 2025 benchmark) through its use of cement replacement with ground-granulated blast furnace slag and locally manufactured, volumetric modular construction.
It will also reduce operational carbon emissions by more than 50% by implementing the latest heating and enhanced building fabric technologies. This includes fully electrifying the scheme with an air-source heat pump in each apartment, on-site energy production and triple-glazed windows.
DEVELOPMENT
Greystar has submitted plans to Croydon Council for One Lansdowne. These proposals unlock a site in central Croydon that has long been earmarked for development.
Designed by HTA Design, the plans will deliver 783 new rental homes across two buildings of 35 and 47 storeys, a new public green square, flexible workspace and a retail unit.
Affordable rents at a range of levels will be interspersed throughout the development, with residents of all homes benefiting from the same level of services and amenities, including a gym, concierge services and rooftop gardens.
The application is a sign of momentum on a long-stalled site that has been subject to abandoned plans to build 68- and 41-storey residential and commercial towers, connected by an 11-storey podium. Greystar’s new plan prioritises a significant reduction in height.
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Get Living has secured a resolution to grant planning consent for up to 848 rental homes and 504 student homes at its East Village neighbourhood in Stratford, east London. The plans, unanimously approved by London Legacy Development Corp., will deliver homes ranging from studios to three-bedrooms for rent across two buildings and a student building.
The approval of the proposals will kick-start the delivery of the final buildings at East Village, completing the original masterplan of a site that was previously the athletes' village for the 2012 London Olympics. The neighbourhood is now home to 6,500 people.
The three new buildings range in height from eight to 40 storeys. Get Living has partnered with London College of Fashion, part of University of the Arts London, for more than 50% of the new student homes. More than a third of the student beds will be affordable.
All of the buildings have been designed to achieve BREEAM Outstanding and Passivhaus principles. The student building will connect to the Olympic Park heat network, providing significant carbon savings and achieving net-zero carbon.
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British Land has received resolution to grant planning permission for a 455K SF multilevel logistics hub at Heritage House, Enfield.
The main 435K SF building will be split into two levels. British Land is providing 20K SF at the front of the site to cater to smaller occupiers.
In line with British Land’s Greener Spaces pillar, part of its 2030 sustainability strategy, the scheme will be rated BREEAM Excellent, with an EPC A rating. All available roof space will be used for solar photovoltaics that, combined with air-source heat pumps, will offset 80% of the site’s carbon emissions.
British Land’s 2.9M SF Greater London urban logistics pipeline has a gross development value of £1.3B.
The pipeline includes two sites off the Old Kent Road (Mandela Way and Verney Road); Finsbury Square Car Park; The Box at Paddington Central, where planning consent was received earlier this year; and sites at Wembley and Thurrock. To date, British Land has submitted planning applications for 1.6M SF of potential urban logistics space.
