The Crown Estate has launched its first co-working flexible office service at One Heddon Street, W1, just off Regent Street.
Providing 350 desks across five floors above a Daisy Green Collection café, Little Green, the new space will be available to occupiers via three membership tiers.
Occupiers can pay an individual monthly rate for a co-working desk in a shared area, or for a bit more cash can have their own dedicated desk and storage space in a shared area. The third tier allows occupiers to take on one of the private offices, which start at two-person desks, Jon Allgood, senior asset manager and the man charged with heading up the Crown’s entry into co-working, explains.
There is also a 32-person office, which the Crown would possibly like to be a flagship office that would attract other occupiers to the space.
It is essentially “turbo-charging” the Crown’s flexible office space offering as the Crown already offers flexible office space across 250 units within its 2m sq ft office portfolio in London and One Heddon Street expands this offer, Allgood adds.
And further expansion of the Crown’s range of office products is planned, with at least three more projects in the works to offer the London portfolio’s customers more options so that they don’t have to accommodate everything in their office space, such as meeting rooms.
However, the Crown has no plans to rival the likes of WeWork and The Office Group, which James Cooksey, director of central London at the Crown Estate, admits have been incredibly successful and have disrupted the market.
He insists that the Crown is creating something that specifically works within its London portfolio that will benefit the portfolio’s existing occupiers, as well as attracting new entrants to the area, which ideally will enable the Crown to further diversify its existing customer base.
Allgood adds that so far the reception to the new co-working offering has been positive, but it has been a learning curve and getting the right team in place on the ground to run the service and engender a sense of community has been hugely important.
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