This Week's London Deal Sheet

The Deal Sheet is a weekly compilation of Greater London and beyond's biggest leases, sales, financing deals, construction updates and personnel moves. Have news you’d like to submit? Email [email protected]. 

Clermont Hotel Group is to convert the Hard Rock Hotel London into the 1,000-room The Cumberland, situated opposite Marble Arch on the corner of Oxford Street and Great Cumberland Place.

The move follows the rebrand of Clermont Hotel Group, formerly Great London Hospitality, which intends to “streamline and reposition” a number of property assets under its key brands.

The transformation to The Cumberland will officially complete at the end of May and will see the creation and expansion of the food and beverage offering, creation of new entertainment space, plus refurbishment of a suite of meeting and event spaces with a fully integrated online booking platform.

Clermont Hotel Group is a hotel owner-operator with a portfolio comprising over 5,000 rooms and more than 120 meeting and event spaces across brands The Clermont and Thistle.

SALES

Center Parcs UK and Ireland has been put up for sale for a reported £4B-£5B, nearly double what it was first acquired for eight years ago.

The chain of six Center Parcs locations in the UK and Ireland is owned by Brookfield, which bought the leisure group for £2.4B in 2015.

At the end of last year, Center Parcs reported occupancy rates of 97.3%, in line with pre-pandemic levels, and the company booked revenue of £427M between April and December 2022, up 20% on 2021 and an 18% increase on 2019.

Center Parcs has been operating in the UK since 1987 when it opened in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, followed by a site in Elveden Forest in Suffolk in 1989.

DEALS

Developer HUB and Bridges Fund Management have acquired 45 Beech Street on the edge of the Barbican Estate for £30M, with plans to refurbish the existing building to deliver a residential scheme.

The deal is the 11th for the pair and builds on the recent acquisition of another City of London site on Ludgate Hill. Both schemes will be developed by HubCap, a wholly owned subsidiary of HUB focused on low-carbon building reuse and emerging housing models. HubCap currently has two other projects under development in Edinburgh.

Allford Hall Monaghan Morris has been appointed as the architect for the project, which sits within the overall Barbican masterplan and is currently used as commercial office space. 

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Flexible workspace operator Workspace Group has exchanged for sale on five noncore properties to Tudor Investment Holdings for a total of £82M.

Completion will take place in June 2023 and follows the sale of a medical centre in Newbury for £7M in July 2022. These disposals are from the portfolio of assets acquired as part of the McKay acquisition, completed in May 2022.

The properties being sold comprise light industrial and logistics properties in Bracknell, Crawley, Poyle, Theale and Weybridge. The latter has recently been vacated with planning for refurbishment. The sale price represents a discount of 27% to the 30 September 2022 book value of these properties and is at a net initial yield of 4.5%.

Workspace Group is progressing with the sale of the remaining noncore properties from the McKay acquisition. They comprise light industrial properties in Farnborough, Banbury and two in Folkestone, valued in total at £28M as at 30 September 2022, plus a vacant commercial property in Woking with planning consent for a 366-unit residential scheme. 

DEVELOPMENT

Bloomsbury Quarter, a project by Tristan Capital Partners fund CCP 5, has received resolution to grant from the London Borough of Camden to refurbish and reposition Sicilian Avenue, London’s first historic pedestrianised high street, plus office space at Vernon & Sicilian House and 21 Southampton Row.

The first part of the refurbishment works at Sicilian Avenue will focus on the west side, delivering 10K SF of retail, while 55K SF of offices are being developed at Vernon & Sicilian House and 21 Southampton Row.

Further plans are underway for the remaining space, and once complete, Sicilian Avenue will offer 17K SF of retail space targeting a BREEAM Excellent rating.

Knight Frank Asset Management is working with Tristan Capital Partners to deliver the repositioning and refurbishment of the site. Alchemy Asset Management is the development manager for Bloomsbury Quarter. Knight Frank and Bluebook are the appointed office agents, with P-Three and CBRE acting as retail agents.

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Malaysian-based IJM Land has announced that its 51% owned UK subsidiary RMS 2 has partnered with Network Rail to explore development opportunities through Network Rail’s portfolio.

Under the partnership, the two parties will explore opportunities to develop mixed-use schemes and residential, commercial and logistic properties in central London and south east England.

Network Rail Group Property Director Robin Dobson said the partnership marked a milestone in regenerating rail over-site developments in central London.

“This is an important milestone between IJM Land and Network Rail as we work together to unlock land opportunities around the railway estate specifically focused on rail over-site developments in Central London," he said. "There is a huge potential to regenerate a number of strategic sites, working closely with key stakeholders to deliver housing, workspace and a wide mix of uses for local communities."