Plans have been lodged for a redevelopment of Woolgate Exchange at 25 Basinghall Street, EC2.
The scheme will see the office building extended and altered to provide refurbished offices, food and beverage space and retail units, as well as a new roof terrace and extended terraces on a number of the floors. The proposals increase the total square footage of the scheme by about 9,200 sq ft to 504,000 sq ft.
The revamp of the City office building, owned by Taiwanese insurance firm Cathay Life, has been on the cards since 2020. Stanhope had been reported to be leading the plans, but is not named as part of the project team in newly published planning documents. The current team includes architects at Stiff + Trevillion, project manager Third London Wall and planning consultant Gerald Eve.
Gerald Eve described the scheme in a planning statement as providing office space “that meets the expectations of a post-Covid-19 pandemic working environment and provides quality, external amenity space for occupiers of the building”.
Revamped public realm is at the heart of the plans. “Ensuring the proposals deliver inclusive and usable public realm for both office tenants, patrons of nearby bars and restaurants and for the general public is of paramount importance together with enhancing the sense of arrival via the main entrance of the building on Basinghall Street,” Gerald Eve said.
The existing building, once home to companies including Nasdaq, Sidley Austin and Knight Frank but vacant since the end of 2020, included 350,000 sq ft of office space over nine floors. The building was developed by MEPC in 2000 and designed by Sidell Gibson.
The revamp aims to achieve high embodied carbon retention by reusing existing structure and building fabric, and the project team expects to achieve net zero carbon in operation and construction.
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