CoStar – 11th August 2017

Westminster City Council has given the nod for two NCP car parks in London’s West End to be redeveloped – one into a luxury hotel and the other into a residential-led scheme at the heart of Mayfair

 

The Reuben brothers’ proposals for the Carrington Street car park will see them tear down the two-storey property and replace it with two new buildings containing up to 29 homes, office space, a gym, an art gallery, restaurants and shops.

Two other six storey office properties at 51-53 Brick Street and 1-6 Yarmouth Place will also be demolished to make way for the 3,140 sq m scheme. A new pedestrian link through the site will connect Shepherd Market with Piccadilly and the two buildings will be erected on either side of the pedestrian route rising to 4 and 8 storeys in height. The scheme is being delivered by Averdeen Oak Ltd & Croix Properties, part of the Reuben Brothers group of companies. Savills is acting as planning consultant and the architects are Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM).

The other NCP car park at 74-77 Welbeck Street, which is also home to members club Sophisticats and burger chain Meat Liquor on the ground floor, is being redeveloped into a 206-bed hotel by its owners Shiva Hotels. The Brutalist-style building has a distinct diamond-shaped façade, which was designed by Michael Blampied and Partners in 1971 for Debenhams.

The department store was building a new flagship on Oxford Street was required by the council to provide a car parking facilities. It is let to NCP until 2021 The 10-storey scheme, designed by architects Eric Parry will also contain a restaurant with up to 100 covers on the ground floor, a swimming pool, a roof terrace and a publicly accessible spa and guest business facilities at lower ground floor level. In the planning application, the developer said the hotel “will act to enliven this currently neglected area of the West End.”

“The form of the existing site, presenting three street frontages, offered the ability to redefine this unloved corner of the West End, and capitalise of its position in the vicinity of Oxford Street, and the new Crossrail/Tube interchange at Bond Street station.

The scheme was met with opposition from The Oriental Club on Stratford Place on the grounds that it would reduce the amount of daylight on the private members’ club. However planners at Westminster concluded that the impact did not justify refusal.  Knight Frank is acting as commercial property consultant and DP9 as planning consultant.