A restored chapel at the heart of Exemplar’s £750m Fitzroy Place project is the ultimate reminder of a history dating back further than the controversial NoHo Square story of 2008. Emily Wright toured the scheme with the team that brought the three-acre site back from the brink
Security staff decked out in Savile Row-tailored suits, glass bathroom doors embedded with intricate coils of brass mesh and a £150,000 budget set aside solely for the purchase of 200 books of 1cm by 1cm squares of gilded gold leaf. When responsibility for delivering the biggest new scheme – and first new square – in central London for 50 years rests on your shoulders, everything matters.
Welcome to Fitzroy Place, W1. One of London’s most high-profile developments given its sheer size – three acres is basically unheard of in such a central location – and complicated history.
The former Middlesex Hospital site has been in and out of the press since 2008 following the infamous collapse of the Candy brothers’ controversial NoHo Square plans. But what a difference eight years and the best part of a financial cycle makes. Developer Exemplar with Aviva Investors acquired the scheme for £156m in 2010, scrapped the original plans and started from scratch. Six years, 7.6m man hours and an average of 80 lorries a day later, the £750m scheme completed last year anchored by a coup of a commercial tenant in Estée Lauder.
And the residents are following suit. On a fresh, spring day last month, 140 buyers moved in, marking one of the project’s final, significant milestones. “This is literally moving day,” says Exemplar’s founding director Dan Van Gelder, gesturing around a lift swaddled in protective cladding. “Sorry it doesn’t look great. But people are shifting furniture and boxes about so it’s a necessary evil.”
From the artwork in the new public square to the design of the 235 flats, and from the carefully curated food and beverage tenants to the £3m renovation of the on-site chapel, Fitzroy Place is one of the most significant new projects this part of the city is likely to see for the foreseeable future. But the finished product is only half the story.
Here, the trio behind the successful completion of the scheme reveal how it felt to take on such an expanse of land back in the “dark days” following the financial crash and why the “innocence” of a commercial developer taking on a project with a large residential component was more of a help than a hindrance.
History lessons
Walking around the bright, public square at the heart of Fitzroy Place as new residents and passers-by bustle in and out, it is easy to forget just how messy the history of this site became nearly a decade ago.
For anyone in need of a refresher, what was once known as NoHo Square became a highly public casualty of the global financial crisis. Icelandic bank Kaupthing, the Candy brothers’ CPC Group and Richard Caring bought the site from the University College London Hospital’s NHS Foundation Trust in June 2006 for £175m, and plans for the Ken Shuttleworth-designed scheme were approved in 2007. The Middlesex Hospital – which had been on site since 1757 and closed in 2005 – was demolished as part of the redevelopment in 2008. Candy & Candy ended its role as development manager in October of the same year, following the collapse of Kaupthing, in a deal that gave full control of the site to the newly nationalised bank.
Kaupthing rejected a bid of £60m from London & Regional Properties in 2009, before Exemplar and Aviva put their £156m alternative offer on the table. “Can you remember what the world was like then?” asks Van Gelder rhetorically. “The property market was really suffering and the residential market was on its knees. But here was this amazing, three-acre site in the centre of London. Our first conversation was with Aviva and we were all confident enough that this was such a good site and such a one-off location that we needed to be involved.
“Together we went to Kaupthing and said, ‘Look, you should not be selling this site. This is wrong. You should be part of a good news story for Iceland and for Kaupthing and join us in delivering this new asset.’ They agreed. I think they saw quite quickly that it was the right thing to do.”
That, and the fact that Exemplar and Aviva were offering something quite unique in terms of the development process.
“Most of the people looking at the scheme were planning to build in phases,” says Aviva’s head of central London Neil McLeod. “We were happy to do it in one go rather than piecemeal.”
As for fears over the risk of making such a bold call in the aftermath of one of the biggest property crashes the world has ever seen, Exemplar director Mark Younger says that as the depths of the dip had passed, there was not much nervousness around the punt.
“I think 2009 was probably the horror year. By 2010, things were slowly improving. Of course nobody knew how the recovery would pan out or how long it would take. But we felt London would recover quite quickly and it is just very hard to get hold of three acres. This was a once-in-a-career opportunity for all of us.”
On the delicate subject of the site’s history and concerns over any lingering, negative connotations, the team is quick to quash any suggestion that the past is anything other than exactly that.
“There has been no opposition to anything we have done here and it is now a very positive site,” says Van Gelder. “But it always has been really. It was sold to pay for the new hospital on Euston Road, so good things came out of it.
“The most important thing was actually delivering something here. It sat for five years with nothing on it so we knew we needed to make stuff happen. We are not in the habit of buying sites and sitting on them so the most important thing was not to focus on the past, but to get construction work started as quickly as possible. Which we did.”
Plan in action
They did indeed. Planning was approved in record speed within just 15 months for the new design. And the development as it stands today could not be more different from the NoHo Square plans.
Apart from anything else, the site has been kept public, something Van Gelder and his team felt strongly about and the design was entirely reworked.
“We inherited a planning consent from Make Architects and Ken Shuttleworth which had come up with a fantastic design,” says Van Gelder. “But we just didn’t feel it was right for Fitzrovia. It was very monolithic so we appointed Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and Sheppard Robson.
“We have gone for two slightly smaller office buildings. And while they had 184 flats planned with an average size of 1,600 sq ft, we ended up with 235 at an average size of 1,000 sq ft.”
The flats themselves – 54 of which are affordable – are sleek, neutral and highly tech-enabled. Right down to the electric moving fridge shelves and the iPad system that allows residents to do anything from authorise visitor access to check how many seats are free in the on-site cinema (and what film is playing) at any given time.
It is all about the minutiae of detail. Appliance switches in the kitchen have each of their functions engraved on the surface. No unattractive stickers here: “That detail cost an extra £300 per flat,” says Van Gelder. “Times that by over 200. Not many other developers would have done that. But I thought it would be worth it.”
Each of the residential blocks has a concierge-style entrance manned by staff handpicked from the hospitality industry.
Then there are the facilities. Technogyms where virtual personal trainers can be accessed 24/7 using residents cards, cinema rooms, massage facilities, lounges complete with statement fireplaces, record players and the start of an LP collection, wine fridges, books, backgammon boards, poker and pool tables that double as dining tables for dinner parties.
“I didn’t want any TVs in here,” says Van Gelder. “So I thought of all the other things I would want out of a space for relaxing or hosting guests. This is what we came up with. I think it works, doesn’t it? It’s fun.”
It is fun. And while only time and habitation will tell, from a mere visitor’s perspective it is hard to see a reason these residences would not work. A success story that would be all the more impressive given that Exemplar is not a residential developer.
“In some respects, I think that is probably why we have been quite successful,” says Van Gelder. “We don’t have any residential baggage. And I think that makes it hard to create something overly formulaic by accident. Maybe our innocence in that regard has been quite refreshing. And it meant we never saw the flats as ‘a product’.”
Commercial success
As for the rest of the scheme, the commercial successes have been well documented. Bringing Estée Lauder on board in May 2014 was a real coup. But it was no mean feat given no one from the company would venture to the area at all in the first instance. Not even to look around.
“They weren’t interested,” laughs Younger.
“They really weren’t,” adds Van Gelder. “I couldn’t even get them to drive by. After a lot of insistence, we managed to get one person here. Then two, which turned into 10, and then everyone. They were looking for 80,000 sq ft anywhere but here. In the end they were persuaded to come here and take 150,000 sq ft. Because the space works and once they actually got their heads around Fitzrovia and how central it is, it was a great fit.”
As for the F&B offer, the rules were strict.
“We met with Pret a Manger and some other similar brands,” says Van Gelder. “But we didn’t want any of those. We wanted something more fun.”
Instead the scheme is anchored by Percy & Founders, part of the Cubitt Pubs Group, with The Larder and The Detox Kitchen also on site.
And, of course, it would be remiss not to mention the chapel. Situated in the centre of the square, this part of the development dates back to the mid-1700s and was where Rudyard Kipling lay in state before his burial. After a £3m restoration, including £150,000 just to replace each and every gold leaf square on the ceiling, the building is now open to the public – a perfect reminder of the site’s history.
“It is an amazing space,” says Younger. “Very unique and completely open to anyone who would like to see it. We wanted to do everything we could to restore it and give something back while remembering the fact this was once the site of a very important London hospital.”
Looking ahead
Six years on since Exemplar and Aviva put in their bid, it would be fair to say that it is a case of so far so good for the Fitzroy Place story.
“Aviva took a risk,” says Van Gelder. “And they will be rewarded for that. It has been a hugely successful project. Estée Lauder is a barometer for that. And the fact that all the residential units are sold and 95% of the entire scheme is let. And it was 100% equity.”
No surprises then that Aviva has no complaints. Well, nearly none. “Can you imagine working with Dan for six years?” jokes McLeod. “It has been like a prison sentence. No, it has been great fun. And when we come back here in 40 years’ time, I think we will still be proud of what we have done because it will still look stunning. And it is not often you can do that.
“As for the site itself? A chance to work on three acres of Westminster is not going to come around in most people’s careers.”
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