36 Queen Street
36 Queen Street was a freehold office building, designed originally by Sir Terry Farrell, located in a prime City of London area close to Bloomberg’s new London HQ. The building comprised 42,000 square feet on basement, ground and six upper floors.
Location: 36 Queen Street, EC4 London
Investment date: April 2011
Opportunity: Complete Office Refurbishment
Purchase price: £16.88m
Opportunity
The original building dated back to 1980 and it was clear that to maximise value the building required fully repositioning through comprehensive refurbishment.
As there was a 12 month occupational lease remaining from the date of the acquisition, this allowed the team adequate time to identify and evaluate the alternative schemes. We appointed an architect and a planning consultant to assist in our evaluation.
Value added
Rolfe Judd Architects produced a new scheme which improved the floor layout, added commercial floorspace and introduced additional window openings to improve the natural light. The scheme achieved a full planning consent from the City of London Corporation.
The comprehensive refurbishment project included stripping the building back to the original structural frame, adding a new floor and completely recladding in Portland stone.
The new curtain wall design provided efficient office floors with maximum natural light. The building’s entrance was relocated to a more prominent position and a contemporary and visually striking new reception created.
In order to differentiate our building from the competition, we hired an interior designer to specifically look at the materiality of the entrance reception. As a result we included the use of some very innovative materials from leather wall panels to Luccon, a transparent concrete permeated with LED on the walls and floors. The market reacted well to this and we leased the floors very quickly at ground breaking rental levels for the area.
Our core objectives
We strive to produce projects of exemplary and world class design but we are fully mindful of our environmental responsibilities and will always try to incorporate sustainability and biodiversity where possible.