Richard set off on the Property Jogle John O’Groats to Land’s End bike ride on Sunday, a gruelling 1,050 mile cycling challenge. 3 days in and he’ll be cycling through Glasgow today, gradually getting closer to England. You can follow Richard and the 10 day team on their blog here. If everyone who reads this pledges a tenner for Richard’s efforts to support our chosen charity KIDS we would raise a lot of money. Go on. You know you can. You can do it here. Thank you.
In preparation for the Property Jogle bike ride starting this weekend, Richard took part in the 2nd Annual St Tropez to Monaco charity bike ride in aid of the Princesse Charlene of Monaco Foundation at the end of April. Richard did the seven hour, 140km bike ride alongside the likes of S.A.S Albert of Monaco, Eddie Jordon of F1 fame, Jenson Button and many more famous faces including a couple of Tour De France athletes. Here is in action (far right). If you would like to sponsor Richard’s next cycling challenge, completing the gruelling 1,050 mile bike ride from John O’Groats to Land’s End , you can do so here.
We gathered down at Westmoreland Road car park yesterday along with our partners at Bromley Council and key team members to celebrate the official start on site of our £90m Bromley South Central development. With a nod to the new 9 screen multiplex Vue cinema, which is a much anticipated part of the new scheme, we transformed the car park into a glamorous cinema set, complete with Bromley in lights. Read more
Some of our Development Team took a stroll up and over The O2 yesterday to look over our sites in east London including Morden Wharf and Canning Town. The rain managed to hold off so they could complete the climb without getting soaked!
Hermes Real Estate Investment Management Limited, one of the UK’s largest property fund managers, has agreed to become our partner in our Bromley South Central scheme. Their investment of £54.9m will help us deliver this ambitious regeneration scheme and provides forward funding for the commercial element of the scheme, 85% which is pre-let. The scheme has also been backed by the Homes and Communities Agency which has invested £9.5m through its Get Britain Building programme. We are already on site with our construction partners McLaren. Onwards and upwards!
We can’t quite believe it but last night we picked up the big one, Development of the Year at the Property Week RESI Awards for Clapham One. We are very excited to win this prestigious award and are so proud of our development and our team. Congratulations to everyone who helped to deliver this multi award-winning project.
This weekend, over 450 people in Brighton came along to our public consultation to see the proposals for our Circus Street scheme. On Thursday, we held a sneak preview of the amazing consultation space designed By Richard Brett and built by Danny Elphick and his team, transforming a cold dark corner of the former municipal marketing into a bright and inviting hub of information. Read more
Five brave Cathedral souls took on the daunting challenge of completing one of the toughest physical challenges going – running a marathon. Becca, Sarah, Sofia and Fergus took on the Brighton marathon earlier this month and James ran the London Marathon last weekend. The five-some have raised (to date) an incredible £9,035.60 for KIDS. We are immensely proud of them all. Congratulations on your amazing achievements and fantastic fundraising.
Formal planning consent was granted by the London Borough of Hillingdon for our redevelopment at The Old Vinyl Factory today. The Section 106 Agreement was signed earlier in the week so now we can now crack on with our scheme to transform this part of Hayes. A huge congratulations to all the team involved and a massive thank you for all the hard work that made this important milestone possible.
In March 2012, along with our partners Development Securities PLC, we acquired Morden Wharf, a 19 acre regeneration site on Greenwich Peninsula. The major riverside regeneration site, formerly a sweeteners refinery, is adjacent to the O2 Arena with 500 metres of Thames river frontage and will play a crucial part in the delivery of the Royal Borough of Greenwich's masterplan proposals for the western side of the Greenwich Peninsula, published in April 2012.
On a site just off Silvertown Way, at the gateway to London's Royal Docks, sits a 2-acre site previously occupied by two thriving businesses - Goswell Bakeries and Moss Electrical. Between them these businesses employed over 100 people as part of a once thriving community. Now these buildings are occupied by a completely different group of people who are there to kickstart a revolution.
We will be delivering an 'Innovation Quarter' in the heart Brighton, one of the UK's foremost creative cities, through a Public Private Partnership with Brighton and Hove City Council and the University of Brighton. We are proposing a new world-class mixed-use destination for creative and technical innovation, just a stone's throw from the Royal Pavilion and Brighton Pier.
With our joint venture partners, Development Securities plc, we acquired the 17-acre London Gate business park in Hayes, Middlesex in April 2011. We've been working up a masterplan for a radical £250m redevelopment of the site that pays homage to its important history with an amazing creative team including Duggan Morris Associates, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris and Studio Egret West. In November 2012 the London Borough of Hillingdon resolved to grant planning consent for the comprehensive transformation and we'll be concluding formalities over the next few months. We'll then be starting our mission to bring 4,000 jobs and a whole new life to an area of Hayes that badly needs it.
In April 2011 we were granted planning consent for The Movement, a vibrant, highly sustainable and truly mixed-use scheme located on the former Greenwich Industrial Estate, currently derelict, which is adjacent to Greenwich DLR and Mainline Station. With our partners Development Securities Plc we will deliver a new threshold for the Royal borough at the main point of entry for visitors to the World Heritage Centre.
We are partners with the London Borough of Bromley in a £90m mixed-use PPP scheme to transform part of Bromley Town Centre. Our Bromley South Central scheme is designed to kick start the regeneration of the South end of Bromley High Street. At the heart of a new residential and leisure quarter will sit a landscaped public square surrounded by a nine screen multiplex cinema, 25,000 sq ft of cafés and restaurants, a 130-bedroom business hotel, 200 private and affordable apartments and a new 400 space secure underground car park. On Tuesday 6th March, the London Borough of Bromley passed a resolution to grant planning consent for the scheme.
With our joint venture partners United House, we have built a landmark £80m mixed-use regeneration scheme which has transformed leisure services across two sites in Clapham town centre, south west London. The Public Private Partnership scheme, provides Clapham with a new, highly sustainable leisure centre, a new, state-of-the-art library, a new family medical centre and some of the most high quality residential accommodation in the borough including affordable housing in partnership with Notting Hill Housing Group. The PPP deal meant that in the teeth of the recession, we were able to secure £35m funding for this hugely important project (including loan funding from the Homes and Communities Agency’s kickstart programme), pre-sell £46m of the development and guarantee the London Borough of Lambeth a brand new library and leisure centre funded entirely from the sale of the private sector element of the development.
Earlier this year, as part of the Spirit of Sittingbourne consortium, we were selected by Swale Borough Council as their development partner to regenerate Sittingbourne town centre over the next five years. We’re going to build a new station square to transform arrival in the town. A new cultural quarter, civic quarter with a new library, brand new public realm throughout the town centre and residential schemes will generate £250m of economic improvement over the next ten years and will create 1100 jobs.
In summer 2008 we installed a 1960s commuter train carriage into a site next to Deptford High Street train station in south east London. We put it there to kickstart a £42m mixed-use PPP regeneration scheme in with the London Borough of Lewisham in partnership with United House. Following Network Rail's redevelopment of the station, we will begin a programme to transform that part of Deptford town centre with a new residential building by Richard Rogers, restoration of an historic Victorian carriage ramp and a new public square. On the 8th March 2012 the London Borough of Lewisham resolved to grant planning consent for our scheme.
We acquired Eynsham Hall from Hanover International in April 2005, a conference and training centre developed around a beautiful Grade II listed Jacobean-style mansion in North Leigh, Oxfordshire.
