Great Portland Estates is due to submit plans early next year for a new high rise building at London Bridge, a Built Environment Networking Event has heard.

Andrew White, development director of GPE, told the London Development Plans event earlier this month, that the company hoped to submit its application for a 352,000 sq ft tall building early next year for the New City Court site on St Thomas St.

He said that early ‘positive’ discussions were under way with Southwark council, which is the local planning authority for the London Bridge.

White said GPE, which only develops in central London, was coming to end of its current major building programme and getting ready for its next investment cycle.

He said that the 42,000 sq ft of office space in GPE’s Rathbone Square development of the West End’s former Royal Mail sorting office was being fitted out for occupation by Facebook after Christmas, with just two of the scheme’s private flats left unsold.

And the 160 Old Street office development in Silicon Roundabout was on target for practical completion in the first quarter of 2018.

White also said that plans for a new development at Bond Street was due to start on site in the first half of 2018 with work scheduled to begin on top of the new Crossrail station in the second half of the year. 

Nick Searl, a partner at Argent, told the same event that the developer’s plans to regenerate Brent Cross aimed to remedy the ‘desert’ of office accommodation in north west London.

He said Argent had been attracted to the scheme by the opportunity to develop the 3m sq ft of offices earmarked for the site in its masterplan, given its track record on opening unpromising locations, such as Brindleyplace in Birmingham and King’s Cross.

Searl said the transport connectivity of the 50-acre site, which sits on the south side of the A406 North Circular Road opposite Brent Cross shopping centre, would be boosted by the creation of a new Thameslink station that would bring it within 15 minutes journey time of central London.

The first phase of the scheme allows for 1,165 residential units, 40,000 sq ft of retail and leisure as well as 14,000 sq ft community space and just 70,000 sq ft of commercial offices.

Phase two contains 1.1m sq ft of office development, 600 residential units, 38,000 sq ft of retail and leisure as well as the redevelopment of a local primary school.

He also revealed that Argent is planning to create a national leisure destination as part of an upgrade of the site’s playing fields, which would seek to capitalise on Brent Cross’ location at the foot of the M1 motorway entering London.

Searl said that one of the scheme’s first elements to be developed would be a destination restaurant that would aim to mimic Caravan’s success in putting King’s Cross on the map.

At King’s Cross itself, he said work was underway on the buildings on the northern side of the teardrop-shaped site with about 800,000 sq ft of offices still to develop.

Searl, said that Argent is working with Thomas Heatherwick to convert the site’s Coal Drops into a new retail quarter, boasting 55 to 60 new shops, which is due to open next October.

And Google had just started on site with its new headquarters, which would have a ‘huge impact’ by bringing 9,000 people onto the site.

Searl also said that Argent would be starting on site by the end of next year on plans to deliver up to 950 homes on five separate sites in the Tottenham Hale area of north east London. He said that the homes, which would include a build to rent component, would be delivered over a six-year period.

And he denied, responding to questions, that London would suffer as a result of efforts to rebalance the UK economy by boosting the regions.

“What is good for the rest of the country will be good for London as well. Delivery in other markets won’t have a massive impact on that and London has incredible global attractiveness,” he said, noting that 95% London’s businesses employ fewer than 50 people, creating significant scope for fresh demand.

Mark Davis, of the Department for Communities & Local Government, said in his presentation that around buy to rent units completed so far had been built in London, which also contained half of the fledgling sector’s construction pipeline. He said: “London remains extremely important for this sector.”