GPE has launched plans to turn the former home of London’s Fashion Retail Academy into its next flexible office.
The company bought 7-15 Gresse Street and 12-13 Rathbone Place in Fitzrovia, W1, from retail group Next for £36.5m in March 2022.
The five-storey, 43,000 sq ft building has been home to the Fashion Retail Academy since 2005, but the institution – which trains people to work in clothing retail – is moving to Electra House in the City of London.
GPE wants to reposition the building as part of its fully-managed flex offering, a growing part of its business.
In an education-to-office change-of-use application lodged with Westminster council this month, Gerald Eve, which is acting as a consultant on the project, said: “Whilst Gresse Street has long served the needs of the academy, there has been a sharp increase in student numbers in more recent years, and as such the academy has outgrown the building. This growth has forced the academy to occupy additional spill-out space on Charlotte Street to meet the increasing demand.
“As well as now being too small for the successful academy, because of its age, the building is increasingly ill-suited to continued use by the academy.”
The building was formerly owned by Gresse Street Holdings, which in turn was set up by the four founding partners of the academy: Marks & Spencer, Arcadia Group, Next and Home Retail Group. GPE bought the site following Arcadia’s administration.
In an interview with EG earlier this year, the team at GPE mapped out plans to lift the company’s flex portfolio to more than 1m sq ft by 2028, up from 414,000 sq ft today.
“We’re going to need to buy a decent chunk more stuff,” said chief financial and operating officer Nick Sanderson.
“The investment market is loosening up and we’re seeing more opportunities emerge from sellers who have buildings with great potential but don’t have the appetite for the operational intensity involved in flex, which we think is worth doing and are getting suitably rewarded for.”
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