AshbyCapital has appointed The Genuine Dining Co to operate a new coffee shop on the ground floor of the 310,000 sq ft Colmore Building in Birmingham.
As part of a £3.5m repositioning of the building – formerly known as Colmore Plaza – entrepreneur Luke Johnson, will open an &More Coffee House. The 1,000 sq ft café will have an external terrace and offer barista-style coffee, breakfast, lunch and hot and cold drinks and snacks.
Johnson is well known for his other business interests, which include Gail’s Artisan Bakery, Eclectic Bars, Feng Sushi, 3Sixty Restaurants, The Draft House, Grand Union and Small Batch Coffee. He was previously chairman of Pizza Express, and founder of both Strada and Signature Restaurants, which owned the Ivy, J.Sheekey and Le Caprice.
The Colmore Building also has a refurbished reception area and new facilities including a gym, treatment rooms and bicycle parking.
The Genuine Dining Co will join existing tenants in the 14-storey building including Allianz, Grant Thornton, Investec, Marsh and Vodafone. Around 104,000 sq ft of office space is available.
AshbyCapital secured an £80m loan facility from AgFe for the building last November. The financing, at a loan-to-value ratio of 60%, follows AshbyCapital’s purchase of the building in August 2015. It was bought from Carlyle Group for around £300m and was two-thirds let at the time of acquisition.
Bilfinger GVA and JLL are letting agents.
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