Sir Stuart Lipton may be one of property’s great luminaries, with more than 20m sq ft of development on his CV, but his eyes still light up when he talks of his latest venture.
Despite being a veteran of the property business since the late 1960s, with more than 50 projects under his belt, including major schemes such as Broadgate, Stockley Park and Chiswick Park, there is no sign of him winding down. Far from it.
The 69-year-old Chelsfield Partners co-founder is now hard at work on the finer details of his plan to transform a historic section of the Royal Docks into a £1.2bn economic hub.
Our exclusive image on page 53 shows how the plans for the transformation, which will include 2.5m sq ft of commercial and retail space, as well as 1.4m sq ft of housing, are progressing. A planning application for the scheme is expected to be submitted later this year.
At the start of March, Estates Gazette revealed that a Chelsfield consortium including First Base and Imagination Europe was chosen as the developer for the 50-acre Silvertown Quays in east London (10 March p35).
Lipton’s big idea this time is to create a sort of high-end shopping centre – a hub for multinational branded companies to interact with their customers, educating them about their products and allowing them to trial new ideas.
He plays down the description of the project as a shopping centre. “It’s not a retail centre as such, it is for a mix of uses, including education, marketing, and research and development as well,” he says. “Big brand and innovation companies are all trying to get nearer to their customers.”
Lipton points to the examples of Apple stores and Nike towns, where customers can try out products without necessarily buying them. “We know that the likes of Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes all have their own visitor centres or brand centres where you can go and try cars and construct your own from various options,” he says.
“Here is an opportunity to bring a series of brand companies onto one site so that this becomes a destination built on its excellent transport links. Where can you go that is like that in London at the moment?”
Transport connections
The plan is predicated on making use of Silvertown’s impressive transport connections. The site is next to London City Airport, Crossrail runs within 400 metres of the site, and Stratford, which is five minutes away, has a Channel Tunnel link and six railway lines to the City.
“We have come up with an idea that would bring a lot of jobs, that would bring innovation and something different, taking advantage of the transport and geographical location to attract international and national occupiers,” he says.
Certainly, the London Development Agency was attracted by the idea. The Chelsfield consortium was chosen ahead of strong bids from Delancey and St George.
Yet it is a project that is not without its challenges. Silvertown, an industrial area dominated by the Tate & Lyle sugar refinery and the John Knight ABP animal-rendering plant, fell into decline after World War II, and, like much of the rest of east London, has been the poor relation ever since.
And previous redevelopment plans have come to nothing. Two years ago, the LDA served a termination notice on the Silvertown Quays consortium – a joint venture between former English Partnerships chief David Taylor, US regeneration company KUD International and the Zoological Society of London.
That deal, to develop a 5.3m sq ft scheme comprising 4,900 homes, offices, shops, leisure and an aquarium designed by Sir Terry Farrell, collapsed as a result of the credit crunch.
But Lipton says he is the man for the job, having already proved to be a crucial cog in much that has gone right in the redevelopment of east London in recent years. He was part of a consortium that drew up the masterplan for Stratford City and what has effectively become the Olympic Park, before he sold his interest to Westfield in 2006.
At Chelsfield too he is involved in some of London’s biggest real estate projects. These include the redevelopment of the former Commonwealth Institute on Kensington High Street, W8, as a 100,000 sq ft home for the Design Museum, plans to redevelop the US Embassy building on Grosvenor Square, W1, and proposals to redevelop the outdated Elizabeth House office block next to Waterloo Station SE1 as 1.25m sq ft of homes and offices.
And with recent investments totalling more than £1.5bn, and backing from key investors including Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund Qatar Holding, Saudi Arabian conglomerate the Olayan Group and Hong Kong banking giant the Bank of East Asia, Lipton has the firepower to deliver.
Quality of life
Certainly, he is no stranger to delivering campus-style developments along the same lines as Silvertown, having made his name through the likes of Broadgate in the 1980s and Chiswick Park in the noughties. “Our interest is in lifestyle and quality of life. People want to live in campus environments. They want to live in cities. They want all the amenities and the culture together,” he says. “People realise the value of the campus against the value of a single building. In some ways you could say the whole of the City is a campus or the whole of the West End is a campus.”
Lipton’s interest in the quality of design of new buildings and public spaces has also won him many fans. He has championed the use of high-quality architects, demonstrating that every project should be of civic value, and in 1999 became the founding chairman of Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, before resigning in 2004 after a row over conflicts of interest. And over the years he has not been afraid to speak his mind on contentious property issues (see panel, left).
So, is Silvertown Lipton’s swan song? Is he ever tempted to give up the property game and put his feet up? The answer is a clear and categorical no.
“I enjoy what I do,” says Lipton quickly. “I have been rather lucky to be involved in some very interesting projects. I don’t think life is all about money; it is about doing decent projects, trying to make them civic in terms of their values, trying to add a dimension to life.”
