Reworked plans for a £350m, 358,000 sq ft office scheme in London’s Aldgate have received the go-ahead from the City of London Corporation.
Tom Appleton, of developer Rocket Properties, said the amended proposals for the 13-storey 60 Aldgate High Street, EC3, will increase outside space, including accessible terraces, and rework the provision of flexible office space “in response to tenant requirements in a post-pandemic world”. He added that the scheme would be net zero carbon.
The newly approved ACME-designed plans are just the latest development in the scheme, for which Rocket Properties has established a joint venture with 4C Hotel Group. In 2014, a scheme was permitted involving offices, a hotel and homes. That hotel is now operational and the residential is under construction.
In 2016, 4C’s revised proposal for a larger office scheme was put forward, which the City Corporation revised to grant planning permission for in December 2020. The third version of the office block, approved today, is intended to boost the project’s sustainability credentials, improve the public realm and better meet post-Covid occupier demands. It will still involve knocking down the Still & Star and rebuilding a “reimagined” version of the pub.
City planning committee chair Shravan Joshi said the amended plans have “a lot of merit” and were “greener, more sustainable” than the previously approved proposals. He added that the development would bring benefits to “an area that needs a lot of revitalisation and improvement”.
Other committee members were less impressed. Marianne Fredericks described the plans as “a carbuncle” that will be “completely out of keeping with the buildings on that side of the high street” and said the loss of the original Still & Star is “a tragedy”.
Committee members voted 18 to five in favour of the plans.
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Image © ACME
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