The owner of a City of London office building is looking to convert the site into flats after struggling to secure new tenants during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The offices at GMS Estates’ 178 Bishopsgate, EC2, has now been empty for more than a year, according to planning documents filed with the City of London Corporation. It was previously occupied by an accountancy firm for some 20 years.
GMS now hopes to turn the office space into three flats of a combined 1,740 sq ft to be managed by a private landlord.
The building, opposite Liverpool Street station, was originally the Sir Robert Peel Public House, built in 1900 and still advertised on the tiled facade. Today the ground floor is an off licence with offices above.
A planning statement pointed to “a lack of appetite for uptake of the existing small-floorplate office space provisions”, describing the building’s office space as “cramped, inefficient and of poor quality”, meaning it cannot meet “the demands of modern occupiers in the City of London”.
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