Private university sets up shop at Aldgate revamp
A private university specialising in legal and accountancy courses is to take up residence at the revamped former Lloyds Chambers building in Aldgate.
BPP, which runs courses in conjunction with leading City law firms such as Linklaters and Slaughter and May, has exchanged contracts to lease 85,000 sq ft at the refurbished 1 Portsoken Street, E1.
The education company will take the first, second and third floors of the eight-storey, 233,000 sq ft building, which includes 9,100 sq ft of retail space. BPP is owned by UK private equity firm TDR Capital.
A private university specialising in legal and accountancy courses is to take up residence at the revamped former Lloyds Chambers building in Aldgate.
BPP, which runs courses in conjunction with leading City law firms such as Linklaters and Slaughter and May, has exchanged contracts to lease 85,000 sq ft at the refurbished 1 Portsoken Street, E1.
The education company will take the first, second and third floors of the eight-storey, 233,000 sq ft building, which includes 9,100 sq ft of retail space. BPP is owned by UK private equity firm TDR Capital.
The floors, which were launched to market at £55 per sq ft, will be used as teaching space. However, this remains subject to a change-of-use planning application to the City of London.
The upper four floors, totalling just under 100,000 sq ft, are being marketed for office use with an additional combined 8,600 sq ft of terraces. Those combined with ground floor office space give a combined remaining availability of 126,700 sq ft.
1 Portsoken Street is owned by Alfred Equities, a US company headed by New York-based investor Abraham Schwartz.
Schwartz bought what was previously a 1980s brutalist block in 2018 for £97m from Chinese conglomerate Fosun, and recently completed the revamp. It had been earmarked to be bulldozed under previous ownership, under consented plans which would have brought a 400,000 sq ft office redevelopment dubbed the “Butterfly” building to the site .
Instead, the refurb was delivered earlier this year by design-and-build company Oktra, and increased the building’s lettable space by 20%. The contractor said it is the largest design-and-build project in Europe, and the job involved filling in a major atrium space at ground level.
The building has a BREEAM rating of Very Good, with amenities including 7,000 sq ft of terraces, a café and 342 cycle parking spaces.
Noble Harris, Cushman & Wakefield and Compton are joint leasing agents on the site. All parties declined to comment.
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Image © One Portsoken
