Weekly property news from the central London boroughs

City of London

Property Week reports that Barking Power Station is on the verge of being bought by the City of London Corporation. The City of London Corporation is facing competition from Amazon to buy the 42-acre power station.The site is valued by Gerard Eve at £100m, with the City of London Corporation wanting to consolidate its three food markets, Billingsgate, Smithfield and New Spitalfields. On the other hand, Amazon want to create a four-storey distribution centre.

Estates Gazette reports that the Eastcheap Estate has been put on the market. The Thackeray Estate has instructed BNP Paribas Real Estate to find a buyer for the three self-contained buildings. The site is valued at around £45.5m and is currently let to 13 office tenants, and seven retail companies. The site is covers around 31,838 square foot, including the Grade II listed gothic-style 33 Eastcheap.

 

City of Westminster

Property Week report that Landmark, the serviced office provider have bought three separate office spaces in London’s West End. They have acquired office space at 2 Portman Street, Cavendish Square at Marylebone and 40 Bernard Street, near Russell Square. In total the acquisition amounts to around 85,000 square foot of office space, with roughly 1,000 desks overall. Following these transactions, Landmark now possess more than 1m square foot of office space in 44 locations. They plan to add six more buildings to their portfolio in 2019.

Islington

Estates Gazette report that the recently developed 160 Old Street has been put on the market by Great Portland Estates. BNP Paribas Real Estate have been instructed to find a buyer for the 166,000 square foot building, with outdoor space on every floor. It also has 6,676 square foot of restaurants and retail space.

The 11-storey building is valued at around £180m. The majority of the building is currently let by Tuner Broadcasting, part of the Warner Media group, including Cartoon Network and CNN.

Southwark

Property Week report that leading marketing firm WPP are in the process of purchasing the Financial Times’ London headquarters, One Southwark Bridge. The owners of the building, publisher Pearson have instructed JLL and Knight Frank to sell the building for around £93 million.  The Financial Times are returning to their old offices in Bracken House in the City of London next year. One Southwark Bridge has been the newspaper’s headquarters since 1989.

Tower Hamlets

Property Week reports that the financial tech and international brokerage company, BCG Partners will move into 130,000 square foot 5 Churchill Place in Canary Wharf in 2019. They will be moving from their current offices at 1 Churchill Place and 40 Bank Street.

Estates Gazette report that the Middle Eastern fund, AGC Equity Partners are putting the Citigroup tower up for sale. The 1.2m square foot tower at 25 Canada Square is valued at around £1.2bn, with AGC having a lease on the building until 2037. AGC have asked CBRE to advise them on the sale, five years after buying the building.

Estates Gazette report that Tower Hamlets have granted planning permission to LBS Properties and Cubitt Property Holdings for their proposals at South Quay, E14. The approval from the local authority comes after five previous applications had been rejected since 2008. The scheme proposes replaces existing office space with a 49-storey residential tower with 332 homes, of which 71 are deemed affordable.