News

FEC paid £96m to fellow Chinese developer Guangzhou R&F Properties for the Vauxhall Square development site.

The deal will see Guangzhou R&F Properties record a loss of nearly £69m on the disposal.

The site comes with outline planning for seven major buildings, including twin 50-storey flat-top residential skyscrapers.

Landowner Canada Israel and development manager Avanton plan to develop the Wembley Point site on Harrow Road with 515 new homes of mixed tenure, 1,200 sq ft of commercial space and a new boxing gym.

The £250m Stonebridge Place development will be built around an already completed office to flats scheme at the location, known WEM Tower London, and will feature landscaped gardens, pedestrian boulevards and new water features.

Architect Patel Taylor drew up the masterplan with Pell Frischmann advising on the environment and water features.

Of the 515 new homes, 341 will be for market sale, with 35% allocated for affordable housing comprised of 57 shared ownership and 117 affordable rent homes.

The first building is a 32-storey triangular tower with glass and green terracotta façade providing 266 one, two and three-bedroom flats for sale.

The second stepped building, rising from 10 to 20-storeys, will have a glass and beige brick façade with balconies providing 249 mixed-tenure homes and flexible commercial space, with a large podium garden at first floor level.

A planned third three-storey building on the site will become home to a new boxing gym and public café with a glass and bronzed-black terracotta façade.

The new buildings will be sited around the existing 21-storey office building on site (pictured above), originally built in 1965 and known as Wembley Point Tower, which was transformed into a residential building in January 2022.

Gil Selzer, Managing Director of Canada Israel UK said: “This proposed residential-led development at Wembley Point is a major urban regeneration project that will create a new destination for South Wembley.

“Stonebridge Place marks the next step in Canada Israel’sinternational expansion plans and building a strong real estate presence in the London property market.”

Omer Weinberger, CEO of Avanton says: “Avanton are delighted to be partnering with international property company Canada Israel on this major urban regeneration scheme in Wembley which will provide market sale, BTR and social housing provision.”

It will be the first step to deliver the new Friary Quarter neighbourhood of 500 homes and ground floor retail, leisure and amenity space.

A new planning application is expected to be submitted this summer with construction commencing 12 months later.

Councillor John Rigg, responsible for regeneration at Guildford Borough Council, said: “I am delighted after seven or eight previous failed schemes on this site over three decades and two years of hard negotiations, we are now under contract with one of the country’s leading housing developers, able and enthusiastic to bring forward such a fantastic regeneration scheme.

“For us to be able to deliver new, sustainable homes and create an exciting new neighbourhood helping to take the pressure off the green belt, whilst also aiding the recovery of the high street is a huge opportunity.

“The extra wins of a new bus interchange and removal of vehicles and pollution from North Street will create a wonderful, safer new environment for visitors to the town.”

Paul Vallone, Executive Chairman of St Edward, added: “We are very excited about engaging with the local community to design a beautiful development with attractive places to shop, eat and catch up with friends.

“We believe we can make somewhere truly special, with its own distinct character, whilst providing a fantastic amenity for local people. This is about creating homes and shared spaces that everyone can enjoy.”

A three-way partnership between LCR, the Department for Transport and the high-speed rail company HS1, sold the taxi rank site to the developer.

Telford already has planning for the 380 homes development, of which 60% will be build to rent and 40% affordable, bringing much-needed housing to East London in line with Government housing targets.

The sale of the combined site on a long lease forms part of a long-term, LCR-led project to consolidate complex land interests and enable development and regeneration across Stratford City over the last 25 years

Jerome Geoghegan, Land & Planning Director at Telford Homes, said: “Stratford is one of the most exciting places to be in London, and we’re witnessing the benefits of effective placemaking in real-time.

“Having developed more than 1,750 homes in the area over the last twelve years, securing the opportunity to deliver more homes for the neighbourhood means we’re able to further contribute to making Stratford a world-leading destination, as well as improving housing supply.

“This site is a great example of our aim to build sustainable communities and create rewarding opportunities for our partners, residents and the communities in which we build.”

The building, designed by Maccreanor Lavington Architects, will rise to 230m including a short spire, which will be illuminated to light up the docklands skyline at night.

Enabling work on the £250m project next to Marsh Wall could start before the end of this year.

According to the latest plans demolition and construction works are expected to take around four years, allowing the building to open before the end of 2026.

Skyscraper in London’s Canary Wharf will feature a distinctive crown with an illuminated spire

The 54,000 sq ft building will provide 495 flats, including a single luxury penthouse on the top floor. Just over 130 flats will be affordable within the building.

The two residential towers will rise to 34 and 37 storeys with the shorter connected to a nine-storey podium of offices.

In total the next phase of development on plot F, near the site of the former Daily Mail printworks, will provide 410 flats with balconies, a roof top park above the offices which will offer 37,540 sq m of workspace.

This next phase has been designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, with Aecom providing project management and Gardiner& Theobald as cost consultant.

AKT II is the structural and facade engineer with MEP and Vertical Transport designed by Sweco

It follows three other major building projects, which moved to construction last year. Wates picked up Plot A1 – a 270,000 sq ft 35-storey tower for 186 build to sell homes.

Mace took the contract for Plot A2 – a 250,000 sq ft office-led project including a 56,000 sq ft leisure centre, McAleer and Rushe is working on Plot K1 – a building solely for 79 affordable homes.

Together these three projects are worth around £300m.

Designed by HawkinsBrown and Mae Architects, the scheme will be built across four buildings located adjacent to Cockfosters London Underground station in Enfield, subject to conditions.

Construction is set to get underway before the end of this year.

It is the fourth project being brought forward by the Connected Living London JV and will include 40% affordable housing, commercial space, better public realm, and new operational space for TfL.

The new homes will be mix of one, two and three-bedroom properties.

Ben Tate, a spokesperson for CLL and head of property development at TfL, said: “We’re really pleased to have been given the go-ahead for our proposed development by Cockfosters Tube station, building on the success of our CLL schemes in Southall, Nine Elms and north Lambeth.

“It will contribute around £4.5m to help improve local infrastructure and services.”

With the capital’s shortage of quality rental properties and affordable homes, CLL was established in July 2019 with an ambition of creating mixed tenure rental communities in the Capital.

Nine Elms overstation scheme will contain nearlyt 500 flats

The green light for Cockfosters follows successful outcomes for applications to deliver 460 new rental homes in Southall at a project known as the Sidings, which due to start in the second quarter of 2022.

Southall station rental scheme in West London

Work is also due to start shortly on Montford Place in Kennington, the JV’s 139 rental homes project in north Lambeth, which was a project site for the Northern Line Extension.

For the large Nine Elms overstation scheme in Vauxhaul, Mace and Bouygues are understood to be among firms that have submitted bids to build 479 new rental homes. This scheme has just advanced this month to tender assessment.

Collectively, these four schemes will deliver more than 1,400 new rental homes across the city.

UCG, which brings together the College of North West London and City of Westminster College, is still at an early stage of planning for the scheme.

Stephen Davis, Group Principal and CEO of the United Colleges Group, said: “Our new site will bring more education, training, and skills opportunities for the residents of Brent and the wider London community and will provide the community with an important place to work and learn.

“With its focus on green skills and emerging technologies, we are also pleased to say that our new location will enable us not just to provide a boost to the present generation but will do so for many generations to come.”

Through its joint venture with QuadReal,  Realstar will fund 251 purpose-built homes combined with extensive amenities and shared and private co-working spaces.

Each apartment will have its own balcony, while the buildings will also be arranged around a landscaped courtyard, located on the doorstep of Deptford Park.

The transaction will further expand Realstar’s UK residential portfolio to £1.5bn and over 3,500 flats across 16 properties of which 11 are operated under its UNCLE brand.

Lendlease has already delivered 203 flats to date at the Deptford Landings site, formerly known as The Timberyard. Ultimately it intends to build over 1,000 apartments, 400 rooms for students and 120,000sq ft of comercial space.

Colin Murphy, Lendlease Project Director, Deptford Landings, said: “We’re delighted that Realstar will launch their latest UNCLE development at Deptford Landings.

“They’ll add a much-needed BtR offering to the mix of new homes on offer in a neighbourhood that benefits from green spaces and excellent transport links. We’re looking forward to delivering a high-quality building containing vital new homes and welcoming them to Deptford.”

Following the transaction, Realstar will have five properties under construction which are scheduled to deliver 1,555 new apartments and over one million square feet of residential space over the next three years in partnership with Redrow, Telford, HUB and now Lendlease.

Ryan Prince, Vice Chairman of Realstar and Founder of UNCLE, said: “From day one our strategy has been to align ourselves with top-tier partners to help meet our aspiration to become the most well-regarded, well-known BTR brand in London.

“It goes without saying that Lendlease hits the bullseye. In terms of the location, I’ve always felt like the brand’s roots are in south east London.”

An application by the London Borough of Hillingdon to seek a judicial review of the Mayor of London’s decision to approve plans for the former Master Brewer site last year has been quashed by the High Court.

The dismissal of the judicial review challenge exhausts all options open to the loca council to halt the brownfield development plan in its tracks.

The plan to build over a dozen housing blocks on the former Master Brewer site in Hillingdon Gardens had been the subject of third-party requests to call in for determination by the housing secretary.

The plans for Hillingdon Gardens will transform a derelict former commercial site, creating a residentially led, mixed-use neighbourhood, with a network of pedestrianised areas, public squares and green spaces.

Stephen Wicks, CEO of Inland Homes, said: “The former Master Brewer site is a brownfield site that has been vacant for 11 years and is exactly the type of scheme where we can make a meaningful contribution to housing delivery in a sustainable way.

 “We are very pleased that this scheme has cleared the final obstacle to its development.

“This consent has taken over three years to be validated and has been extremely difficult to achieve.

“It is very disappointing that it should be such a long and torturous process to develop on an allocated brownfield site in a highly sustainable location.

 “It is a great testament to our legal and planning team that we have been able to overcome the many obstacles that were put in our way and we can now finally get on with the job of delivering much needed homes for London.”