A weekly round up of the latest planning and property news from the central London Boroughs.

Camden

PW reports that Schroders’ West End of London Property Unit Trust has signed a new 15-year lease with Warner Bros Entertainment at 98 Theobalds Road, WC1.  The US-based company is WELPUT’s largest tenant, as the sole occupant of the 135,000 sq ft West End office building.  The new lease will start in 2019 and will run until 2034. A joint plan for the refurbishment of the property was also included in the transaction.

City of London

PW reports that asset management firm Barings has agreed to lease 113,000 sq ft of office space at Blackstone’s 20 Old Bailey in the City of London. Barings will consolidate its current existing London offices at 155 Bishopsgate, 61 Aldwych and 11a Regent Street into a single, six-floor office at 20 Old Bailey. This follows the merger of Babson Capital Management, Baring Asset Management, Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers and Wood Creek Capital Management under the Barings brand in September this year.

PW reports that Obidos Properties has obtained an £85m loan from pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank to refinance the Montcalm Royal London House hotel in London. The five-star hotel comprises 10 floors of bedrooms, conference rooms, restaurants and bars over 10 floors on Finsbury Square.  The property is one of serveral operated by the Montcalm Hotels Group in central London.

PW reports that UD Europe Ltd and Kajima have secured a 37,420 sq ft letting to communication company NTT Europe Ltd at One King William Street.  The office space in the City of London building is over the lower ground, ground, first and second floors. The building has recently been refurbished and rebuilt to provide 100,000 sq ft of space, of which 57,355 sq ft now remains available for lettings.

City of London and City of Westminster

PW reports that Whitbread has sold two London hotel sites for more than £200m in sale-and-leaseback deals with M&G Real Estate and Aviva Investors. M&G will forward fund Whitbread’s 339-room hub by Premier Inn on Tothill Street, Westminster.  The price is £101.825m and the hotel will be leased back to Whitbread for 25 years from opening in December 2018.  Separately, Aviva Investors has agreed to forward fund a 326-room Premier Inn in West Smithfield, Farringdon for a price of £102.86m. It will also be leased back to Whitbread.  The deals have both been completed at an initial yield below 4%.

City of Westminster

PW reports that the owner of London’s landmark hotel Grosvenor House has emerged from administration thanks to a refinancing deal with the billionaire Reuben brothers.  The senior debt secured against the hotel was already held by tycoons David and Simon Reuben after they took over the loans in 2015 from Bank of China.  A refinancing deal with the brothers has now enabled the hotel’s owner Sahara Grosvenor House Hospitality to exit administration. Deloitte had been appointed as administrator in early 2015.

PW reports that Orchard Street Investment Management has been unmasked as the buyer of 25 Great Pulteney Street in London’s Soho. It has bought the office building for£54.4m, reflecting a yield 3.96%, on behalf of St James’s Place. It was acquired from F&C Commercial Property Trust, which is managed by BMO Real Estate Partners.  Recently redeveloped, the seven-storey building provides 32,500 sq ft of office space that is fully let to WPP, CarVal Investors, Medicxi Ventures and Zebedee Capital Partners.

PW reports that Dominvs Group has acquired an office building in Marylebone in London’s West End for £9.5m.  It has exchanged contracts with the private owner of 233-237 Old Marylebone Road.  The 9,137 sq ft building has potential for conversion into residential, hotel or offices uses. The current tenant has one year left to run on the lease at a rent that would reflect a yield of 1.7% on the buy price. It is not known what Dominvs has planned for the scheme. Dominvs was unrepresented and Goldenberg Real Estate acted for the seller.

PW reports that Thor Equities and Chenavari Investment Managers have sold 1 Dover Street – the home of nightclub Mahiki – to a Qatari investor for £65m.  The deal marks a swift turnaround on the mixed-use building for the investors who bought the property for £47.2m in June. In September, they broke the rent record for Dover Street when the ground floor retail was leased to Caffe Concerto at £500/sq ft.  Having completed a range of renovations on the 19th century, six-storey former prestigious hotel over the past six months, Thor and Chenavari have concluded the strategic sale ahead of schedule.  Caffe Concerto is set to open in September 2017, adding to the lower level leasing to popular nightclub Mahiki, within the 23,310 sq ft property containing retail ground floor, upper floor office space and a top floor penthouse residential apartment.

PW reports that The Crown Estate is to start a £100m redevelopment of a retail and office block in St James’s, London.  Duke’s Court will be located on the corner of Duke Street St James’s and Jermyn Street. The completed scheme will be comprised of 35,000 sq ft of office space over five floors, above 11,000 sq ft of retail units and restaurant space at ground and basement levels.  Six new apartments will also be built at 33 Bury Street as part of the project.  The plans, which have been designed by John McAslan and Partners and will be delivered by Skanska, form part of The Crown Estate’s wider £500m investment programme in St James’s.

PW reports that Derwent London has sold its freehold interest in 120-134 Tottenham Court Road to a private investor for £69.7m.  The property comprises a 330-room hotel and 26,400 sq ft of retail and restaurant floorspace. Radisson Blu Edwardian Grafton occupies the hotel on a long lease with a 147-year unexpired term, while the retail units are let to 11 tenants on various lease terms.   The building produces a net annual rent of £2.3m.

PW reports that F&C Commercial Property Trust has completed the sale of its freehold interest in 25 Great Pulteney Street, in London’s West End, for £54.4m. The deal, to an undisclosed buyer reaching a yield of 3.95%.

EG reports that Berkeley and Residential Land have submitted an application to join Edgware Road’s West End Green and Paddington Green sites.  Berkely bought the West End Green site in 2015 after years of delays. It has planning for 652 homes across eight buildings.  Residential Land owns adjacent plot at 14-17 Residential Paddington Green, W2, through Luckysix Investments .  The new plans will reconfigure two of the blocks from the Berkely plot with the Ritchie-owned site.  The blocks will provide 200 units around a courtyard, adding 140 extra homes to the site and taking the total number of units for the site up to 792.

ES report that Chinatown traders issue warning over future amid business rates rise.  Restaurateurs and shop owners in Britain’s biggest Chinese district are planning a joint appeal against the Government revaluation of their businesses.

Hackney

PW reports that Hackney Council has given the green light to a £200m regeneration scheme in Clapton.  Plans to create 400 homes across a two-hectarevacant site were approved yesterday by the council’s planning committee.  The Nightingale Estate will feature homes for social rent, shared ownership and outright sale alongside the 300 affordable homes already built on site by housing association Southern Housing Trust.  Construction is expected to start later this year and will also include a new community centre, a café and a retail space.

Hammersmith and Fulham 

PW reports that Restaurant group D&D London has signed a deal to open a new Bluebird Café at the former BBC headquarters in White City, west London.  The 5,000 sq ft unit will include a café, bar, deli and an outdoor terrace. The group manages 34 restaurants in four countries and a luxury hotel in central London.  Television Centre is part of a wider £8bn regeneration scheme of the area, which will bring 4,000 new homes, over 2m sq ft of office space and an estimated 20,000 new jobs. Television Centre alone is set to deliver 950 new apartments as well as 400,000 sq ft of premium office space.

RBKC

PW reports that Fashion brand Giorgio Armani has signed for new space at George House on Chelsea’s Sloane Street. It has taken a 3,794 sq ft store at the Cadogan Estate-owned building, which it will occupy for more than a year while its unit at 37 Sloane Street is refurbished.

PW reports that chef Clare Smyth, who formerly worked for former Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. Due to open in late spring or early summer 2017, the 60-cover restaurant will comprise a total of 3,921 sq ft at 92 Kensington Park Road and will replace Notting Hill Brasserie.

EG reports that RBKC is selling three sites as private rented sector portfolio development opportunity. The three sites at Acklam Road, W10; St Marks Road, W11; and Canalside House, W10 could accomdate 75 flats and 50,000 sq ft of business space.

Southwark

PW reports that London and Continental Railways (LCR) has signed up three flagship tenants to its Leake Street Arches retail scheme below Waterloo station.  Italian craft beer pub The Italian Job will open its first central London venue at the 23,250 sq ft scheme, following its debut in Chiswick.  The second tenant is 175-capacity music venue Aures, which claims to be the UK’s first custom-built acoustic event space.  LCR is also close to signing a French bistro, which hopes to launch its first London restaurant at the scheme when it opens in the summer.

Tower Hamlets

PW reports that Resolution Property has announced a 30,000 sq ft pre-let at its Moretown scheme, the re-branded Thomas More Square estate in Wapping, London. The world’s largest architecture, design, planning and consulting practice, Gensler, has signed a 15-year lease to occupy space at one of the refurbished buildings within the 560,000 sq ftcampus.   Under the newly unveiled Moretown brand, the Thomas More Square estate will be repositioned to create a ‘design-led’ campus for modern media, technology, finance and innovation businesses. The wider estate is already home to Sky TV, IPSOS Mori, Digital Window, Thales and Handelsbanken.

PW reports that WeWork has taken 55,800 sq ft with Blackstone at the recently refurbished International House in London.  The shared workspace provider will occupy the fifth and sixth floors of the 215,000 sq ft building at St Katharine Docks.  The deal follows a letting to IT training provider QA and takes the building to 93% occupied, with 15,000 sq ft on the second floor still available.   Recentchanges at International House include the creation of a new reception area and Benugo deli. Other facilities include a ‘floating’ meeting hub. Blackstone also recently signed a deal with pan-Asian restaurant Ubergrub to open at the docks.