The City of London Corporation has given a double-thumbs up to two of the Square Mile’s most high-profile schemes.
Goldman Sachs’ 1.2m sq ft mega-campus was waved through by planners shortly after Christian Candy’s landmark luxury residential scheme Sugar Quay received the go-ahead.
The investment bank’s approval will see the vacant Plumtree Court and Fleet building at 40 Shoe Lane, EC4, demolished and replaced with a single nine-storey office blockl and a net area of 850,000 sq ft.
Development of the 4.2-acre site is being managed by Tishman Speyer.
The Kohn Pedersen Fox-designed building will take around four years to build and will become one of the largest office buildings in the Square Mile.
Meanwhile, Christian Candy’s Sugar Quay scheme was approved at the same committee meeting, in a rare instance of residential development being permitted in the Square Mile.
The scheme will provide 165 luxury flats at the now vacant former Tate & Lyle warehouse on the north bank of the Thames.
Candy’s CPC Group bought the EC3 site from administrators KPMG for around £34m last year.
It was Candy’s first property investment since buying Chelsea Barracks in 2008 for £959m.
Lord Foster’s architecture practice has designed the scheme, which has a gross internal area of just over 280,000 sq ft.
The flats are arranged over an H-shaped block of part nine and part 11 storeys.
There will be 38 studios, 44 one-bedroom flats, 60 two-bedroom flats, 12 three-bedroom flats and 11 three- and four-bedroom penthouses.
City planners had previously approved an office scheme for the site, featuring a 320,000 sq ft David Walker Architects-designed building.