Robert Tchenguiz’s plans to turn MI5’s former Mayfair headquarters into a private members’ club have been dealt a major setback, after Westminster council rejected it for breaching a new policy framework it adopted in April.
The investor lodged plans last year to convert the intelligence service’s former offices on Curzon Street, W1, into a hotel and members’ club, which councillors initially voted to approve in February.
However, before Westminster formally gave consent for the project to go ahead, it adopted its new City Plan, a set of policies designed to control development in central London via targets for housing, economic growth, public open space and greenery.
Now, Westminster councillors have decided Tchenguiz’s scheme does not adhere to the new rules, and have revoked permission for it to go ahead.
Officials have taken issue with the loss of office space the scheme would result in. The building, Leconfield House, contains around 96,000 sq ft of commercial space, most of which is offices.
The building’s holding company, which lists Tchenguiz as a director, has argued the office space is not high quality enough to keep, and instead wants to turn the site into a 65-bedroom hotel with a private members’ club on the sixth and seventh floors, as well as an 8,400 sq ft rooftop restaurant.
But for this to go ahead, planning officers said the owners must advertise the office space for as much as a year to prove it is surplus to requirements.
Speaking at Westminster’s planning meeting on 3 August, a lawyer for Tchenguiz said: “It is in no one’s interests to pause the application for a year of marketing to take place. That is not good planning.”
He added that the decision would “leave dead in the water a significant and highly beneficial development”, and that last minute objections late last year “had the deliberate effect of forcing the application into the arms of a policy which it could never entirely comply with”.
The change of tack comes despite Westminster planning officers previously having described the scheme as a “well-designed proposal which will preserve and enhance the character and appearance of the Mayfair Conservation Area”.
The seven-storey office building on Curzon Street, W1, was the intelligence service’s HQ from the end of World War Two until 1976, when MI5 moved to offices in Gower Street.
Tchenguiz bought the building for his Rotch property business in 2004 for about £140m. He has previously said he wants to turn it into the “highest-end hotel in the world”.
To send feedback, e-mail alex.daniel@eg.co.uk or tweet @alexmdaniel or @EGPropertyNews
