Posted on December 11, 2010 by Rob Powell
A huge new office development for investment bank, UBS, in the City of London has been submitted to local planners.
Developers British Land Company PLC and the Blackstone Group have jointly put forward the scheme at 5 Broadgate which would provide over 700,000 square feet of office space.
The 12 storey building, designed by Ken Shuttleworth at Make, would include four trading floors, each capable of accommodating 750 traders.
The developers say that the offices would use “photovoltaics” and solar thermal panels to generate low carbon energy, as well as “reducing water consumption by rainwater harvesting and increasing biodiversity through the incorporation of green roofs and terraces.”
Chris Grigg, Chief Executive of The British Land Company PLC, said: “It is vital that the City is able to meet the current and future needs of key occupiers for attractive, flexible and sustainable floorspace as financial services will be a major driver in the recovery of the UK economy from recession.”
Posted in London |
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Posted on December 10, 2010 by Rob Powell
SERVICED office provider, i2 Office, has appointed a new Executive Director.
Nick Wentworth-Stanley has joined the company having had a successful career within the Lloyds insurance market where he was CEO of Hampden Agencies Ltd, the largest members’ agency at Lloyds with premium income capacity in excess of £1.5 billion. He became CEO of the Hampden Group and remains a non-executive director of Hampden Capital plc.
Mr Wentworth-Stanley commented:
“i2 Office, under the leadership of Philip Grace, is an exciting company which is setting a new standard in the serviced office arena. A combination of the best Grade A buildings, cutting edge technology and a focus on first class service means that i2 Office is a natural choice for any company looking for quality offices on flexible terms.”
i2 Office was founded by Philip Grace and operates business centres in Milton Keynes, London and Glasgow.
Posted in Buckinghamshire, London |
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Posted on December 10, 2010 by John Cronin
A renovation and refurbishment programme has commenced on a large, mixed-use building in the heart of London.
Property developers Land Securities have started work on their office and retail building at 123 Victoria Street, SW1. This quickly follows the granting of planning permission that was only awarded a week ago by Westminster City Council.
The office block was constructed in the 1970’s and offers total floor space of 227,000 sq ft. There is 177,520 sq ft of office space and 45,370 sq ft of retail space on the ground floor. The offices were previously occupied by the Government until its lease expired earlier this year. The building (pictured) was previously referred to as Ashdown House.
The schedule of works includes complete replacement of all the glazing, a new roof and roof terraces, full interior fit-out and improvements to the neighbouring public spaces. The refurbished offices will be Grade A rated and available floor plates across the 13 floors will range from approximately 5,000 sq ft up to 35,000 sq ft.
The redevelopment of 123 Victoria Street follows on from other projects that Land Securities have undertaken in Victoria. The developer completed the Cardinal House mixed-use scheme in 2005 and plans to complete the 275,000 sq ft 62 Buckingham Gate office building by 2013. Robert Noel, Managing Director of Land Securities’ London Portfolio, said: “This is the next step in our master plan to regenerate this important destination in the heart of the capital”.
The £150m refurbishment programme is expected to be completed in late 2012. Architects for the project are Aukett Fitzroy Robinson. Indicative rental prices are not yet available.
Posted in London |
Tagged Planning, Renovations |
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Posted on December 9, 2010 by John Cronin
The first tenant has been secured at a new offices development in Worcester.
Ascendant Europe, a partner of global IT giant IBM, has agreed to let office space at the new Waterside development in the city centre. The Waterside is a mixed-use development by developers Berkeley Group, consisting of residential, commercial and office accommodation. Built on the site of the former Royal Worcester Porcelain premises, the development is adjacent to the Worcester and Birmingham canal.
The first phase of the Waterside offices development is now available within four buildings, three of which are refurbishments of existing factory buildings. The one new-build office is called Warmstry House and offers approximately 18,300 sq ft of high specification office space over three floors. The largest floor plate available is 6,810 sq ft on the second floor.
Ascendant Europe has signed for 3,560 sq ft of floor space in the converted Slip House (pictured), a two floor building offering 6,854 sq ft of open plan floor space. The offices are so-called because it is where the “slip” or liquid clay mixture used to make porcelain was made. The other two converted offices are the 5,472 sq ft Throwing House and the 4,788 sq ft Saggar House.
Henry Harrison from agents Knight Frank, said of the letting “Ascendant’s reasons for relocating their regional headquarters to The Waterside demonstrate the requirement for high quality office accommodation in Worcester”.
The quoted rental price for Slip House, Throwing House and Saggar House is £17.00 per sq ft and £17.50 per sq ft for floor space in Warmstry House. The buildings can be split as necessary and are available on either a freehold or leasehold basis.
Joint marketing agents are Knight Frank and Halls Commercial.
Posted in Worcestershire |
Tagged Renovations, Rental Prices, Speculative Developments, The Waterside |
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Posted on December 9, 2010 by Nell Frizzell
Britain’s most belligerent boss and the oldest mod to ever be seen leaving a lift is still on the search for a teasmaid. Or a photocopier. Or something. But in the fight to become The Apprentice, only the formidably stupid, aggressive and nasal survive. It’s week ten and somehow The Apprentice contestants have still failed to form a trade union.
In a modern communication miracle, the morning telephone call is answered by someone other than Stella. It is Hollyoaks Jamie who receives the happy news that they’re all due at Wandsworth bus garage. Is this a reminder or just how far Lord Sugarcoatednuts has come since his humble Hackney beginnings? You know, right down the Northern line.
Cue bewildering shots of Liz applying blusher to her neck (is there any situation in the world that calls for a bronzed neck?) and Chris desperately clasping an insufficiently small towel to his genitals. And so, to the garage. Forget bringing a gun to a knife fight, Lord Alanstrad has brought a Bentley to a bus garage.
“I’m giving you each an open top bus for the day,” honks Lord Sugarpuff. This is going to be the shittest re-make of Speed ever. Their job, if they chose to accept it (and it’s a miracle to me that they still do) is to start their own London tour company. Which I suspect will be a tiny bit harder for Northerners Liz and Joanna than for dyed-in-the-Thames Londonites Jamie and Stella. But hey, what’s the point of a level playing field if you are too stupid to stay vertical.
“I feel very passionate about the Cockney thing” says Stella, who proposes a tour packed with pearly kings and queens, jellied eels and rhyming slang. Or thermal tights, knock-off handbags and stray art students, seeing as they’re on Petticoat Lane.
Jamie, on the other hand, does an impression of a male model with a nasty case of Polio to illustrate his idea for a spooooky ghost and ghouls tour. Well, we all know how scary ghost stories are in broad daylight surrounded by traffic.
While scoping out the East End, Liz hones in on a jar of jellied eels like an Egyptian shark to a distracted swimmer. “You can now enjoy the smell of urine,” quips Stuart as they amble past the Whitechapel Gallery. Well… you know what those contemporary artists are like when it comes to continence.
So to the pricing. Stuart suggests £30-£40 for a walking tour of London. Which is approximately seven times the price of a one day travel card. Yes, that’s seven times more expensive than a ticket to anywhere in London. And you have to walk. Someone’s been sharpening their brain on a turnip again, haven’t they Stuart?
For Synergy, Monotone Christopher manages to broker the quite shockingly selfless deal that guarantees a tourist centre 20% of their total earnings. Yes, total earnings. That includes drinks, tips, everything.
Like beggars looking for cigarette butts and talking to automatic doors, Joanna and Jamie hustle strangers for money the the bus station. Sadly, the words ‘Sweeney Todd’ spoken in a French accent and ‘Buckingham Palace’ barked in a Mancunian twang are somehow lost in translation.
On the day of the task Team Apollo dress as up as a troupe of corporate tomatoes, replete with jaunty hats. Needless to say, Stuart illustrates perfectly the meaning of the phrase ‘straining at your buttons’. Synergy, meanwhile, go for a strong look I will coin ‘baggy stripper’ with matching navy nylon combos.
“The clock face of Big Ben is 20 diameters in width,” Jamie tells his bus of assembled tourists. Which is certainly news to Pythagoras. And to maths as a whole.
Meanwhile, Stella is giving her tourists a lovely tour of the building works, safety ramps and pneumatic drills of East London, while her Pearly King stares through glasses apparently made of paperweights. She then gets lost on Petticoat Lane. Perhaps because she’s looking for a mobile food van. Note the word ‘mobile.’ Probably not the best landmark to base your walking tour around. Still, if any of her tourists are looking for a cut-price Next suit or £1 plastic bangle they are in luck. And at least she’s got the world’s toothiest man to accompany her in a rousing chorus of Knees Up Mother Brown on the way home.
So, the task is over it’s back to the boardroom, where Karen and Nick both pretend to be consulting their notebooks, despite the fact that all that could possibly be written on those pads and files is ‘Change Sugar’s Bag’ and ‘Don’t Mention The Amstrad’.
In his summing up, Lord Sugarmort brings up the famous turf wars of Trafalgar Square. Did I say ‘turf’? What a laughable typo – mind you, this ‘f’ is terribly close to the letter ‘d’ isn’t it?
The final figures reveal that although Apollo managed to bag £834.30, Synergy leapt in to the lead with £1,099.33 profit, despite giving 20% of it away to an outside company.
So Jamie, Joanna and Chris are flying off to Jersey. Presumably to visit the billions of pounds of taxes not being paid to the British treasury. For Apollo it’s ‘gutting’ time in the café. Both Stella and Liz agree that Stuart is to blame. But will Lord Sugar agree? The answer, I’m afraid, is a painful one.
Despite the fact that Stuart didn’t have a price strategy, sold half as much as Liz and, lest we forget, has the face of a garlic naan and all the charm of bluetac, Lord Sugardaddy seems to be wavering. “I’ll make you so proud of me.” Stuart begs as he starts to unzip Alan’s trousers under the table. “I’m not a one trick pony, I’m a ten trick pony. I’m a field of ponies,” he goes on. Stuart, you are not a field of ponies. You are a white roll in human form.
So, it’s between Steady Stella, Fellatio Stuart and Unblinking Liz. Well, insanely, and in an absolute triumph of deluded male solidarity over sense, Lord Sugar chooses a sociopath over a salesperson. Liz, who Lord Sugarpuff admits has ‘consistently done well on sales throughout the process’ goes to the wall, while Tourettes Stuart goes home to wave his willy in the mirror.
Posted in Misc |
Tagged Apprentice Blog |
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Posted on December 8, 2010 by Rob Powell
The former offices of the Conservative Party in London’s Smith Square have been taken over by the European Commission.
Around 60 EU workers will be based in the offices which will also represent the European Parliament. The European Commission purchased the property, now renamed as Europe House, for £20million.
The building was home to the Conservative Party from 1958 until 2004 and it was from there that Margaret Thatcher’s three election victories were plotted.
She famously said “No! No! No!” to Europe leading the influential Conservative Home website to suggest the EU are “cocking a snook at Conservative eurosceptics by buying the former Tory HQ.”
Foreign Secretary, William Hague, who announced his resignation as party leader outside the building following the 2001 General Election, attended the opening of Europe House on Monday, prompting his opposite number, Yvette Cooper, to tease him in the House of Commons yesterday:
“Last night, he went back to Smith square, to the old Conservative central office. From the windows where once Margaret Thatcher waved on election night now waves a blue flag with yellow stars. Where once sat Tory party researchers working on the Bruges speech, there are now French, German and Italian officials. He was invited for the opening and renaming of central office as Europe House. It cannot be easy for him.”
The Conservative Party is now based at 30 Millbank – recently targetted by student protesters.
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Tagged Millbank |
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Posted on December 8, 2010 by John Cronin
A public-private sector office scheme in Sheffield is in the spotlight after failing to achieve planned rental income.
The New Deal for Communities body in Sheffield, known as Burngreave NDC, oversaw a project to redevelop an old office building once occupied by the Department for Social Security. Burngreave NDC spent some £4.5million converting the Sorby House building (pictured) into Grade A rated, high specification, flexible office space. The project was not expected to be profit making.
The refurbished office building was opened in 2007 with the aim of providing employment support and serviced offices for local residents and commercial floor space for businesses and third sector organisations to rent. The building offers office suites and hot-desking facilities over four floors, ranging in floor spaces from 145 sq ft up to 2532 sq ft. On site meeting room and conference facilities are also available.
The scheme faces an uncertain future however as low occupancy rates and demand from the commercial sector mean that the project is not currently financially viable according to reports, including an editorial column in The Star, a regional newspaper for South Yorks. New Deal for Communities projects are now required to put forward viable succession plans to the Government before March 2011 as central funding is scheduled to end and it was planned to turn Sorby House in to an independent, charitable trust.
However, Jeremy Diskin, executive asset manager at Burngreave NDC, has said “just 48 per cent of the building is occupied and it is not generating sufficient revenue to cover its running costs”. Burngreave NDC chair Ronnie Lewin said: “Unless we come up with a new business plan, we will have to transfer the asset back to the local authority.”
Burngreave NDC has already returned control of two other office buildings to Sheffield Council.
Posted in South Yorkshire |
Tagged Public Sector, Renovations, Serviced Offices |
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Posted on December 7, 2010 by John Cronin
Leeds councillors are due to discuss office conversion plans for a landmark, former printworks building in the city centre when they meet later this week.
Property developers Rushbond plc had submitted plans initially in 2007 to convert the historic, Grade II listed Alf Cooke printworks buildings in Hunslet Road, Leeds (pictured). The developers want to partially demolish parts of two existing buildings and construct 13 office units in eight, three-storey blocks along with a cafe/restaurant, car parking and public space.
A separate planning application is required for the partial demolition of a listed building. The existing main print hall building is listed due to its significant architectural features and would be retained and converted into offices. The existing mill building would also be retained and refurbished as office space. When constructed in 1895 the building was the world’s largest print works, stretching for some 394 ft along Hunslet Road (source).
The new scheme will offer approximately 162,000 sq ft of floor space with maximum floor plates of approximately 17,700 sq ft potentially available within the converted warehouses. Typical floor plates in the new office buildings will be in the range 3,000 sq ft – 5,000 sq ft. Initial timescales indicated that a first phase of the speculative development would be available from November, 2010 but no date has been given for a revised schedule of works.
The proposed scheme has been presented on three occasions to Leeds Civic Trust and the developers indicate that the Trust have confirmed their support despite some concerns about “the bland exterior” appearance of the new office buildings. English Heritage have not offered any comments and suggest normal planning guidance should be followed on this occasion.
The report produced for the planning committee concludes that the proposed development would make effective use of a large brown field site and recommends permission be granted.
The planning committee is due to meet this Thursday.
Posted in West Yorkshire |
Tagged Demolitions, Listed Buildings, Renovations, Speculative Developments |
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Posted on December 7, 2010 by Nell Frizzell
During the Roman age, citizens and subjects would take part in a festival of such ferocious drunkenness, such sexual licentiousness and such moral degradation that people were assumed to have gone temporarily insane. This bacchanalian frenzy could last up to a week during which, according to the records, ‘whoever would not submit to defilement, or shrank from violating others, was sacrificed as a victim.’
That’s right! The Christmas Party actually appears to pre-date Jesus. Someone call a scribe! Of course, it is just about possible to avoid being sacrificed as a victim at your seasonal do; it just takes balls of steel, the speed of a ninja and the cunning of a fox. So let’s get those jangling black-clad fox balls rolling
1. Don’t Sit Next To Your Boss
What are you, deranged? This is the very person you’ve been trying to hide your festering drink problem from for the last seventeen months. Now is not the time to get ‘tiddly’ with the person who pays your rent. No. If you must sit down at your Christmas Party (and, for any bosses reading this, there is nothing wrong with letting people stand up – or even sit outside in their taxis, for that matter) then make sure you are well out of sight, hearing and smell of the big cheese. If seating plan dictates that you must share elbow space with the boss then for the love of mince pies make sure you top up their glass every time they look the other way. After all, the only good boss is a shitfaced boss.
2. Wear very complicated underwear
Whether you’re a bra and knickers sort of person, or a greying Y front kind of candidate – and I wish to ascribe no gender to either choice by the way. What lies beneath is your business – make sure that on the night of your Christmas party you jettison your ‘good’ underwear for something fiendishly difficult to get off. I’m talking steel-reinforced control pants, buckles, belts, straps, buttons, double stitched seams and maybe even a set of thermals. Because, whatever happens, you do not want to be without your wonderpants at any point during the proceedings. Whether it’s photocopying or copping off, the Christmas party is never the time to let loose.
3. Eat something
We’ve all been to them – the Christmas parties where the only thing to eat is a crumpled stack of mimeograph paper and some abandoned tic tacs. Well, not this year kids. This year, food is your friend. While the recession has no doubt dented the festive drinks fund, we can all stretch to a salty snack before the hard liquor starts to flow. Not only will this soak up the worst of the wet stuff swilling about your insides, it will also give you something to vomit other than your own lung when the night is over.
4. Ask for a promotion
Well, why not? The only thing anyone is going to remember the next day is that moment when Sue from accounts sang the entire Fresh Prince of Bel Air rap to a dusty yucca plant and Tony from Estates tried to teach the CEO the Harlem Shuffle in the toilets. So, you might as well practise your promotions speech in front of the face you will one day have to convince. Just consider their flapping visage a sort of visual aid, and try not to get distracted when they start dribbling.
5. Turn your phone off
Modern communication is a wonderful thing. Until you’re three units shy of total liver failure and you’re reading through confidential work emails and text messages from your latest fling. No calls. No texts. No messages. No joke.
6. Write the name of your partner on your hand, their phone number on your arm and your address on your stomach
Well, best not to leave these things to chance, eh? Not only will the stomach tattoo come in useful when you’re slumped over in a taxi, but the name and number up your arm will trick you in to thinking you’ve had an exciting romantic liaison without the risk of actually cheating. If you’re single, then try writing your mother’s maiden name and the number of a local takeaway.
7. No games from the waist down
As much fun as passing a balloon from sweaty, static crotch to sweaty, static crotch sounds, you’re probably best off saving it for a slightly more suitable party. Like, say, a funeral. The day you go bumper to bumper with a colleague is almost certainly the last day you can convincingly challenge them about an approaching deadline or budget overspend. Of course, we all know that word games can be as boring as Hades, but better yawning than poking, if you know what I mean.
8. Make friends
This is a party after all. And if those friends happen to have a hip flask and the direct line to a prominent recruitment consultant then all the better. Just don’t say anything along the lines of ‘you’re my best friend’ or, worse, ‘I always thought you were a bit stuck up/smelly/old/thick but you’re actually a laugh!’ The Christmas party is never a time for honesty, sober or otherwise.
9. Have a get out plan
I am honestly starting to wonder suspect that people only have children in order to get out of awkward social events. A babysitter really is the Swiss passport out of the occupied territory that is the Christmas do. Simply drop a mention of a baby-sitter studying for their GCSEs and you will be met with approving, responsible smiles, allowing you free to saunter straight out and in to the sweet golden sunshine of your local lock in.
10. What happens at the Christmas party, stays at the Christmas party
Posterity can go swivel, honestly can kiss my grits and reality can eat my shorts. What happened never happened, what you heard was never said and you didn’t see me, right?
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Posted on December 6, 2010 by Rob Powell
Bloomberg, the global financial data and news supplier, is to build a new HQ in the City of London according to reports.
The company is set to build its new European headquarters at the site of Bucklersbury House in Walbrook, near the Bank of England.
An existing scheme to redevelop the site by owners, Legal and General, fell through earlier this year.
Foster and Partners have reportedly been chosen to design the new landmark building which will contain up to 500,000 sq feet of office space.
Bloomberg is currently based in other offices in the City of London, in Finsbury Square. The company was founded in 1981 by Thomas Secunda and Michael Bloomberg, now Mayor of New York.
Posted in London |
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