Out-Law News 1 min. read
13 Oct 2011, 1:56 pm
The redevelopment of the one-acre site, which faces Old Street roundabout, will create a mixture of office, retail and residential accommodation the developer said.
The focus of the redevelopment is a 16-storey office building designed around a 'White Collar Factory' concept. This aims to create environmentally-friendly and sustainable office buildings using features such as concrete slab cooling, which will also make the building cheaper to run.
Surrounding the office block will be a range of five to six storey new and refurbished buildings to be used as studio office space, which the developer said would be aimed at the growing media market in the area. In total the redevelopment will create 271,000 square feet of office space.
There is provision for 10,000 square feet of ground-floor retail units which will face onto City Road and will surround a public square at the centre of the site.
Additional residential accommodation of nine units totalling 8,000 square feet will be accessible from Mallow Street.
The scheme represents a 130% increase on the existing floor space at the site and is expected to cost in the region of £105 million to complete, Derwent said.
As a condition of its planning permission the developer has agreed to pay the new Crossrail levy in full and has also agreed to pay a large contribution towards off-site affordable housing.
Derwent said it is hoping to secure a significant number of pre-lets before it starts the project. The scheme will add to their current investment portfolio which stands at 5.4 million square feet, 96% of which is located in central London.
