Yoo Capital chairman John Hitchcox has built up a multi-million-pound property design empire over two decades across 36 countries.
Here, he discusses plans for the firm’s £750m Kensington Olympia project, which was given the go-ahead by Hammersmith and Fulham Council last week.
So far, Hitchcox has spent 18 months working on the scheme, which Yoo co-owns with Deutsche Finance.
What is the vision for this project?
We want to embrace the events business and create a design, arts and cultural district supported by all the events. The focus was always the exhibition business. It is about trying to make sure that people have a really good time – at a business and a social level.
We want to open up Kensington Olympia to the public and make the whole thing more permeable, bringing in different walks of life.
We are not ExCeL; that is more a B2B offering. People go there specifically for a B2B event, traipse the floors, then leave. Owing to our location and all we have to offer, we want to aim for an all-encompassing experience.
How competitive was the tender process?
At the time, no one was interested until the 11th hour, when we nearly got gazumped by a Chinese developer. We came in fairly late in the game, and someone else came in even later. But we were one of the few people that had a very big vision for it – no one expects to make 14-acre districts.
What are your collaboration plans for Kensington Olympia?
We have around 25 detailed conversations going on with very well-known names about all the various components of the project, and we have a 700,000 sq ft office building that we want to let. We want to get complementary creative industry people: from those in the creative arts to music and business exhibition types.
What other plans do you have – will you buy something else? What else is in your portfolio of this scale?
We have the Lakes scheme in the Cotswolds, which has had a great couple of years and is not blighted by the general malaise of the London residential market. We are out looking at new projects at the moment.
Our business is really about special situations: unique situations where we can bring our skill set, which is design placemaking curation. Across the world, we do a lot of residential and hotels.
What do you think the main challenges are for London real estate?
London is a special market at the moment; there have been huge shifts in residential and retail. We are fortunate with Olympia as it is an exhibitions business and less affected by some of these big macro trends.
We are hoping that residential will come back and there will be some tax changes or stimulus that will open the market out. I don’t think the market can continue for ever with the blight of Brexit and stamp duty. Until we get real clarity, we are cautious. We have done a lot in London – we are big players here and we are keen to do more – but it’s a question of timing.
What experience do you have working abroad and what place has inspired you the most?
Parts of my life have been spent in New York, as well as in places such as Hong Kong and Sydney, which are filled with rejuvenation projects. We are active in 46 countries.
For inspiration, I look at Las Vegas. I haven’t worked there, but just look at what’s happening. It used to be a place of sin, and now it is a place of entertainment; all the wild parties have been softened a bit. I spent a lot of time looking at the city with one of our partners in the US, so there are perhaps things to be learned from Vegas.
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