The Royal Mail is to sell its Mount Pleasant residential development site in Farringdon, EC1.
Knight Frank has been appointed sole agents on the scheme, which has planning for 681 homes, 163 affordable, and which forms part of the active sorting office site.
The development could have a gross development value of £600m, and is expected to attract bids in excess of £200m.
Plans for the 6.4-acre site will also include 23,000 sq ft of retail and community space.
It is one of the first large prime residential development opportunities to be put up for sale since the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.
The Royal Mail is looking for an outright sale of the leasehold of the building, but will retain the freehold. Proceeds from the sale will be used to modernise and redevelop the sorting office site, which it will retain, but build over.
A Royal Mail spokesman said: “Royal Mail has begun to market for sale the parts of our Mount Pleasant site that are surplus to our operations. We obtained planning consent for the redevelopment of these areas in March 2015.
“This will not affect our operations at Mount Pleasant, which will continue to remain at the heart of Royal Mail’s mail processing and deliveries in London.
“We are also now in the process of identifying potential contractors to start working on separating our operations from the areas of the site earmarked for development. These works will take around three years to complete and require significant investment from Royal Mail. They are vital to any future redevelopment on the site. It is expected that these works will begin later this year.”
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