Mezzo is going Cuban as part of Consolidated Property Corporation’s plans for a Soho “renaissance”.
Laurence Kirschel’s company this week secured legendary Cuban bar El Floridita — where Ernest Hemingway had a reserved seat — as a tenant at the Mezzo restaurant building on Wardour Street, W1, for the bar’s first UK venture.
Consolidated has restructured Conran Group’s lease at the 100 Wardour Street building. Mezzo owner Conran will relaunch the venue in a jv with the directors of El Floridita, Havana Holdings.
Kirschel now plans to start work on a separate 40,000 sq ft rundown site to create a “gateway to Soho” from Charing Cross Road WC2 (see below.
The Mezzo relaunch will see the main 25,000 sq ft bar and restaurant redeveloped as a Spanish restaurant, Meza, on the ground floor and the larger lower ground floor will become Floridita’s bar and restaurant. A cigar shop and café, La Casa del Habano, will replace the adjoining Mezzo Café and florist.
The jv will pay £1m pa with four-yearly rent reviews. Kirschel said the figure was in excess of what was achieved previously under the turnover-linked lease on the site. The new rent is not connected to turnover.
The plans coincide with the development of the Soho Hotel, a 96,000 sq ft (8,900m2) hotel on a former NCP car park site in Wardour Street owned by Consolidated. It will open in September.
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Kirschel – who controls over 1m sq ft in the area – is kickstarting the development of a triangular site bounded by Old Compton Street, Moor Street and Charing Cross Road. Consolidated won consent for a 40-bedroom boutique hotel, a 750-cover restaurant, three shops and seven apartments on the site in 2000. But the redevelopment was blocked by delays in moving minicab drivers and unlicensed drinking and gambling establishments out of the 11 buildings. |
