Developers tapped up for £2bn St Mary’s regen opportunity

St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, W2, is set to be redeveloped to include a new mixed-use project valued at more than £2bn.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, alongside adviser Savills, has launched a soft market-testing exercise to ask developers for proposals to bring forward what will be one of central London’s largest regeneration opportunities.

The trust has worked up plans, both a base and optimistic case, for developers to work from, but is also open to entirely new proposals.   

An optimistic projection shows surplus land around the hospital could include 2m sq ft of development, including two residential buildings of 50 and 47 storeys, as well as a further five buildings to include offices, a hotel, a private hospital and ground floor retail.

A base case shows total development of 1m sq ft and it is likely that, due to densities, a scheme of somewhere between 1m sq ft and 2m sq ft will ultimately be built.    

In addition to the commercial element, the eventual developer of the project will also provide two new and refurbished hospital buildings totalling around 800,000 sq ft.

The Western Eye Hospital and adjacent former Samaritan Free Hospital on Marylebone Road, NW1, also fall under the control of the trust and form part of the project. These could be brought forward more quickly than the Paddington estate and be turned into a 91,000 sq ft residential scheme.    

St Mary’s Hospital is in dire need of upgrading. However, as one of London’s four major trauma centres, it must be kept open during redevelopment.

The entire project is expected to last 10 to 15 years.

Owing to the complexity of the project, it is expected that joint ventures combining expertise across different assets classes will submit proposals. Submissions must be made by the end of August and will feed into an outline business case presented to NHS regulators in Q4.

Following an OJEU process, a partner is expected to be chosen in 2019.

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