‘We get excited by making life difficult’: Jacob Loftus’s flex ambitions

Jacob Loftus is not one to play it safe. Since founding boutique developer General Projects in 2016, he has taken on schemes as varied as the redevelopment of a former MI5 bunker in south London to the refurbishment of the City landmark One Poultry. With a former Woolworths HQ and, more recently, the Heal’s Building on Tottenham Court Road thrown into the mix, it all adds up to an impressive – and eclectic – body of work for the 33-year-old property boss. Now, the former head of UK investment at Resolution Property has rolled the dice again by setting up a flexible office operator. The venture, General People, will operate alongside General Projects, and take on some of its portfolio. At the point of launch, the flex company has two buildings on its books, with another two in the pipeline. And like its sister company, Loftus hopes General People will stand out from the crowd. It may come as some surprise, then, that its first space, the 117,000 sq ft Expressway building, is in a distinctly unglamorous location. Nestled beneath the Silvertown flyover in the Royal Docks, it houses more than 100 small business tenants in a warren of miniature workspaces. Inside, it is sleek, fashionable, and full of amenities like private kitchens and breakout spaces, but still a far cry from the gloss that the major players have led us to expect from flexible offices. And that is exactly what Loftus wants. “The growth of WeWork, The Office Group and other serviced workspace providers has proven that an increasing proportion of small businesses want to be in beautifully designed, flexible, service-driven space,” Loftus tells EG. “But when you move outside zone one of central London, very little of that really exists.” So Loftus, along with one of General Projects’ principals, Jacob Sandelson, have set about creating a space to plug that gap. As well as offices, the building contains so-called “maker spaces” for small industrial clients such as furniture makers. The many corridors lead back to an open, shared atrium with shared desks and sofas, as well as an in-house coffee shop. “There is a huge amount of focus on creating flashy serviced offices for hotshot businesses. And, actually, the majority of the small business ecosystems in the UK are companies who have been around for quite a long time, have a handful of employees and are focusing on steady growth,” says Loftus. “The cost of being in a mainstream serviced office is prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of them.” Steady growth Loftus hopes General People itself will be a “steady growth” business, in contrast to the dizzying expansion of WeWork in its first few years. Of its four office sites either operational or coming soon, the company owns two, including Expressway, which was bought for £16.3m in 2019. The other two will run as joint ventures with the building owners, where General People is the operator. “We will probably buy a couple more sites [over the coming years],” Loftus says. “But then hopefully we can start to build more of a joint venture management agreement structure as well. Most important is that we are in neighbourhoods where there are lots of independent businesses, but where there is not yet the availability of the right sort of office product. “In five or 10 years’ time, if we look back and we have 15 or 20 sites in interesting locations where we’ve managed to cluster innovative small businesses, that to us would be a really successful outcome. This certainly is not about building the world’s biggest operating business.” We want to be doing interesting things, not copy-and-pasting what we did on the last project to the next. We get excited by making life difficult and having to invent the new every time – Jacob Loftus The sites will also have to be at scale – usually around 100,000 sq ft or more. That is so they can achieve what Loftus calls the “critical mass” to bring together hundreds of small tenants, enabling the operator to hold events, pay for high-quality amenities and run social impact programmes. Expressway launched its first Incubator Programme with local Newham Council in October 2020, giving 17 local entrepreneurs the chance to set up and develop their business ideas for free at the site for six months. And, like most of the sister company General Projects’ portfolio, they will have to be unique in some way. General People’s other three buildings include the old Walworth Town Hall, a Grade II-listed converted Victorian municipal building near Elephant and Castle, SE17, which was ravaged by a fire in 2013; Type, a more conventional flexible office site at Canary Wharf’s Sierra Quebec Bravo, E14, previously known as South Quay Building; and the Florentia Clothing Village in Haringey, N4, a 90,000 sq ft creative arts campus to which the company hopes to add 100,000 sq ft of workspace. An upcoming site at Pollard Street, in east Manchester, could also be added to the roster. The 350,000 sq ft, Hawkins Brown-designed scheme will include a five-building campus that Loftus hopes will ultimately bring 3,500 jobs to the area, alongside more than 100 SMEs. “One of our big sayings is one size doesn’t fit everyone, it fits no one,” says Loftus. “So we are exploring whether there are the right dynamics to bring General People into that. I think there will be, but it’s undecided.” Identity crisis? Nonetheless, one might argue that General People is lacking a clear identity when compared with its many rivals in the flexible office space. Loftus may not want to emulate WeWork, but at least when you are in one of the US giant’s products, you know about it. Does the new venture know what it wants to be? “I would actually flip that question,” he says. “Expressway, as an affordable, SME hub in the Royal Docks, knows exactly what it wants to be. Type, as a high-quality design-led serviced office which is substantially cheaper than its competitors, knows exactly what it wants to be. The Walworth Town Hall as a characterful, heritage driven restoration product aimed at local businesses in south London, knows exactly what it wants to be. “General People is the operating platform that allows all of those one-off places to operate seamlessly, effectively and profitably, like a best-in-class serviced office that has hundreds of sites.” That operating platform has been propped up by a series of heavy hitters: its head of operations is Joanna Lee, formerly of flexible office operator Uncommon, while head of sales Tony Steel came across from flex company Landmark. They are led by General Projects’ Sandelson, as chief executive. “There are two reasons we did not launch a conventional flexible office brand,” says Loftus. “Firstly, it is very competitive. The green shoots are there for it, but I’d question whether it’s oversaturated.” Indeed, along with WeWork, TOG and the ever-expanding IWG, a number of smaller flex brands have sprung up in recent years such as X+Why, Fora, Spacemade and Work.Life. But the second reason goes right to the heart of what General Projects, and now General People, is all about: unusual, quirky and brave spaces. “We want to be doing interesting things, not copy-and-pasting what we did on the last project to the next. We get excited by making life difficult and having to invent the new every time,” he says. “Sure, it’s tiring – but it’s also fun.” To send feedback, e-mail alex.daniel@eg.co.uk or tweet @alexmdaniel or @EGPropertyNews Photos: Tian Khee Siong/Peter Landers/Darc Studio