The EG Interview: John Hitchcox on reviving the grande dame

From Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd to dogs, horses and ideal homes, London Olympia has seen it all. And despite the cranes that currently tower above the 15-acre site, it wasn’t the £1.3bn refurbishment that paused its events programme but Covid. Last month, with the London mayoral count, it began to get back to what it has been doing for 135 years. Next month fans of Indiana Jones, Doctor Who, Harry Potter and Star Wars will be hoping nothing prevents them from meeting their heroes at London Film and Comic Con. The halls are fully booked between September and December. There is no bigger real estate project in the UK that has powered on through the pandemic. A tired suite of exhibition halls is being replaced by a modern mixed-used destination featuring theatres and performance spaces, a cinema, hotels, offices and public spaces. “A new quarter for London” is an overused phrase but approach the site today via the wrong entrance (guilty), walk the perimeter and you’ll have plenty of time to realise that it’s no exaggeration here. It’s been four years since John Hitchcox’s Yoo Capital and Deutsche Finance acquired the site from Capco for £296m. First they had to see off a Chinese developer which had sought to gazump at the last minute. But it was only then that the real hard work – persuading the council and the community to back their vision – began. With several anchor tenants secured, they can be rightly pleased with the position they find themselves in today. Hyatt and citizenM will run two hotels, AEG Presents will run the live music venue and Trafalgar Entertainment is taking on a 70-year lease to run a state-of-the-art theatre. You will have to wait until 2025 to take one of 1,575 seats in what is the largest new permanent theatre to open in London since the National Theatre in 1976. Back in repertoire To secure, and retain, these tenants through the pandemic is no mean feat. “What’s been amazing about that is to watch the confidence that everyone has had,” says Hitchcox from what was Olympia’s VIP entrance hall when it opened in 1886. “These were players that we were working with before Covid and they’ve all come through and they’ve all got complete courage in their conviction and they’re going through with the plans.” Covid may not have derailed those plans but it has disrupted them. “Unfortunately, right at the beginning I got Covid,” he says. “I think at the outset of Covid, we were all blindsided by the scale of this thing and no one really knew where we were going to end up. “Unfortunately, we had to close. The original plan here was to keep the venue open throughout the construction and we were literally building around it. But we’ve had to furlough 125 people who have been sitting waiting for us to reopen, which we’ve just done. We used that time to get the foundations built and a lot of other activities are underway. We were very lucky. We signed a big loan just before Covid to build the whole thing out. And we’ve got some very deep-pocketed partners in the German pension funds and state institutions that came along the way with us.” Development isn’t always easy in this part of London, as Capco’s experience at nearby Earl’s Court attests. But Hitchcox believes it’s the vision for the site, and a desire to do things differently, that has kept stakeholders on board. “The whole process was not to go with a plan to level these beautiful buildings and build a huge office block and residential and all of the usual things that developers do. It was really to take the original intended use and embellish it and polish this jewel. And that, I think, was the essence and the driver of the process of taking all of the stakeholders along the journey. “We’ve had 63 days of public consultation where we’ve invited all of the local residents, all of the politicians and also all of the potential tenants to come and visit this idea, which was really about embracing the events and entertainment industry and bringing this whole grande dame back to life.” We’ve tried to make the whole scheme as cohesive as possible. With a theatre, we’ve got a great tenant who’s going to run that. With a music venue, AEG is running that. So we’ve got some great pillars behind the project That thread runs through to Olympia’s social impact. “We’ve tried to make the whole scheme as cohesive as possible. With a theatre, we’ve got a great tenant who’s going to run that. With a music venue, AEG is running that. So we’ve got some great pillars behind the project. And then alongside that we’ve partnered with [music therapy charity] Nordoff Robbins and Raindance [a charity providing training and skills through film] and a few smaller charitable businesses in the theatre and in the arts, to try and encourage apprenticeships for the whole site.” Talks with potential tenants (yes, from the leisure and creative industry) for the 550,000 sq ft of office and co-working space are ongoing. Setting the scene It’s a colossal undertaking but one that builds on other projects Yoo has delivered, says Hitchcox. “That’s been our practice for the last 40 years, whether it’s Bankside or Canary Wharf or Clerkenwell or even Soho. We’ve been working in regeneration projects and in our practice, we’ve taken that around the world. It’s not area-specific. It’s all about placemaking, setting the scene for rejuvenation.” Standing over the model for the site, where some notable spaces will allow for further development, Hitchcox says he remains bullish on London, though he offers one caveat. “You have 300 shows a night in London and, apart from New York, there’s no other city in the world that has anything comparable to that. And then all the accompanying restaurants. Imagine closing all of that. I think they will reopen much quicker than people expect. Some people say events take longer to happen and quicker to resolve. And I feel like that’s happening already. “However, I do think there’s a big question mark over offices that everyone’s grappling with at the moment. And I think the jury’s out to some extent. A lot of companies are going to cut back on their space in the short term, which is probably the right thing to do until it levels out.” Hitchcox has been planning some of the Olympia project from the Lakes (by Yoo of course), an 850-acre luxury second home and holiday rental scheme set around six lakes in the Cotswolds. And he’s not been alone in doing so. How might that trend play out? “During lockdown we’ve had very, very large companies being run from the Lakes and you can see now that particularly those in senior management are beginning to think about London as a pied-à-terre and places like the Lakes as somewhere where they’ll spend more time because of the discovery that we can use things like Skype and Zoom.” The lure of the Cotswolds may change where decisions are taken on Fridays and Mondays but is unlikely to have a long-term impact on the capital. The same may not be said of Olympia. The creative industries have done so much to grow London’s economic and soft power over many decades. Such a sizeable investment in that, post-Brexit and post-Covid, will only accelerate London and the UK’s recovery. John Hitchcox was speaking to EG as part of Jewish charity Norwood’s 2021 property event, held last night. To support the charity, go to https://www.norwood.org.uk/ To send feedback, e-mail damian.wild@eg.co.uk or tweet @DamianWild or @EGPropertyNews