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.
Birchgrove has acquired its ninth development, a 60-apartment community in Mill Hill, north London, built on the site of a historic former medical research institute, for £36M.
Ayrton House will offer purpose-built, self-contained one-, two- and three-bed retirement apartments with communal features including a restaurant, club room, licensed bar and wellness suite, and landscaped gardens.
The building is part of the Ridgeway Views residential scheme, a 47-acre, 528-home project in Mill Hill’s conservation area.
The 60 units are expected to be delivered in turnkey condition in 2024 and have been funded by £10.2M of equity from Bridges Fund Management and a development facility from Octopus Real Estate.
The acquisition of Ayrton House is Birchgrove’s third development in London and comes just weeks after the completion of a 78-apartment development in Hampton Court, with a 50-apartment site in Chiswick having been acquired in 2022.
Birchgrove operates three retirement communities across the south-east, with three further communities under construction.
LEASING
Meta has paid £149M to break its lease on a central London office building just two years after the tech firm committed to occupying the site owned and recently redeveloped by British Land at 1 Triton Square, near Regent’s Park.
British Land, which owns the eight-storey building, said in a trading update that Meta had surrendered the lease for one of two buildings it rents in the same development.
British Land told investors this would impact its earnings for the six months to next March but added that it was hoping to reposition its Regent’s Place development as a centre for life sciences.
CORPORATE
Flexible workspace operator Covalt has launched to market, having previously signed a number of agreements to immediately manage over 100K SF of office and amenity space.
Covalt offers a complete management service for flexible workspaces, covering everything from branding and design through fit-out and community management, the company said.
Within the next five years, Covalt aims to have over 1M SF under management and a minimum of 30 centres, mainly across London and the south-east, but it said that it is targeting key cities like Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
Covalt was founded by former Cushman & Wakefield flexible workspace executives Calum Russell and Dave Moran, as well as Julian Arlett from luxury hospitality group Habitas.
ACQUISITIONS
Whitbread has acquired the freehold interest in New London House at 6 London Street, EC3, in the City of London. The 90K SF office, retail and restaurant building was acquired from clients of Orchard Street Investment Management for £56.5M.
The building, which was developed in the 1970s and comprises a podium and tower structure, is adjacent to Fenchurch Street station. Whitbread intends to seek planning consent from the City of London Corporation to repurpose and extend the building into a hotel-led, mixed-use development with a mix of complementary uses on Crutched Friars and London Street together with new public spaces.
The New London House acquisition is part of Whitbread’s strategy of targeting office buildings that no longer meet the requirements of occupiers and investors and offer the opportunity to repurpose into hotels.
FINANCE
OakNorth and Searchlight Capital Partners have provided £88.5M in capital to Third Space to support the luxury health club brand’s continued growth, backed by KSL Capital Partners.
Third Space has eight clubs across London, and KSL Capital Partners acquired a majority stake in July 2021 from Encore Capital, which remains involved as a minority shareholder in the business.
PEOPLE
Nuveen Real Estate has expanded its European debt team with the appointment of two new senior hires.
Caroline Pellmann has joined as a senior director from Berlin Hyp, where she was responsible for the sourcing, negotiation and execution of mortgage-backed senior loans in Germany and Central Europe.
Karolina Wojtowicz has also joined as a director. She was previously at LaSalle Investment Management, where she was underwriting, structuring and executing transactions in the UK and Western Europe.
Jason Rodrigues has been promoted to senior director and in his new role will lead strategic, longer-term asset management.
