London residential research took a private tour of Manhattan Loft Gardens with Harry Handelsman, chief executive of the 24-year-old super brand and redevelopment specialist Manhattan Loft.
Though the visit was on a typically British grey and autumnal day, the striking form with the triple-height cantilevered roof gardens as well as the terracotta and glass cladding stood out.
The ground floor is a quadruple-height 18m-tall lobby which Handelsman believes will be the heart and soul of the building, saying: “As soon as residents walk into the lobby, they’ll feel like they’re home.”
The tower stands at around 38 storeys and will eventually rise to 42, with topping out scheduled towards the end of November. Around 90 people are on site at the moment. This will rise to 300 at the peak of the fit-out process next year.
The residential element will complete in spring 2018 and the 150-bedroom hotel, spread over seven floors, a little later in the autumn. The hotel will include a high-end fine dining restaurant as well as a gym and meeting rooms, all of which will be accessible to the residents too.
Although no Manhattan Loft project is ever the same, many include both homes and a hotel: the St Pancras restoration and No 1 West India Quay in Canary Wharf spring to mind. However this will be the first in which Manhattan Loft operates itself and has not been sold on to a high-end brand.
Handelsman explained that both the cantilevered roof gardens add an extra £12m to the cost of the project, by no means an insignificant sum. Surely the increased revenues will outweigh the costs?
Handelsman says: “Who knows, that’s really not the point. I just did it because I wanted to.” Manhattan Loft is more interested in creating iconic buildings, which try to test the limits of engineering. Handelsman doesn’t have shareholders to appease; he does things because he wants to, and it’s refreshing to see, stood on the 35th floor, amongst a backdrop of volume builders squeezing out homes for maximum profit. This is no ordinary developer.
The cantilevered roof gardens will surely come to define the building, each with their own theme, but designed to allow residents to interact with each other and take in views across the capital. The residential apartments above each roof garden will have a more industrial feel, with the steel frame that wraps around the building, almost like a belt for support. Instead of hiding them, they’ll be shown off and celebrated. And why not? They should be. They’re an engineering feat.
Handelsman is on site on a weekly basis, sometimes for business, whether it be for a meeting, but also sometimes just for pleasure. His love for the project and its architecture and engineering is infectious, and his attention to detail equally so.
For example, the entire second floor is currently given over to show apartments. Not for potential buyers however, just the man himself. When we visited, builders were putting up stud walls all over the place, testing out the space, fitting in bathrooms and bedrooms. Essentially testing what works and what doesn’t. The walls go down and back up again in multiple arrangements until Handelsman is happy. “You can look at drawings all you like, but until you’re stood in the physical space, you won’t know what it actually looks and feels like,” he says.
This is the type of attention to detail that has got Manhattan Loft where it is today. It’s also why Handelsman, after selling around 40 apartments, including a £10m penthouse, will be releasing the rest in phases, but holding a good number back until the building completes. Only then can potential buyers see the finished product.
The marketing suite currently on the South Bank, on the ground floor of a previous project, will likely close soon. Again, just with the drawings that Handelsman referred to, even the virtual-reality walk-through and the renders won’t highlight the quality of finish. Some may argue it’s risky when a market seems to be slowing and interest from overseas buyers has dwindled. For Handelsman though, it’s a risk worth taking. Not having shareholders to appease and weekly targets to achieve on sales rates like a return on capital volume housebuilder would, Handelsman and his team can do things differently.
Further proof in the confidence of the scheme comes from the fact that Handelsman will be holding onto a good chunk of the homes and not selling them at all. Instead the apartments will go onto the rental market where they’ll surely achieve rents well above the average for the area. When creating a building that will set a new benchmark for high-rise living, not just for Stratford but for London as a whole, why sell that asset soon after completion? Instead, by holding onto the apartments, Handelsman will reap the benefits from the increased value that will surely accrue, long after it completes.
I mention, pointing over the horizon, that there’s a lot of build-to-rent homes coming onto the market in the very near locality, not least the thousands of units (mostly in towers) left within the Olympic Village site to be built by Qatari Diar and Delancey. The first tower is currently under construction, although not yet off the ground. Handelsman doesn’t seem to mind the competition however. Manhattan Loft has often gone where others haven’t dared and has been ahead of the curve.
“If anyone else can build a better building than me, with as good communal spaces, then honestly, good luck to them,” he says. The competition has its work cut out.
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