Almacantar to Shell out £550m on iconic office
CENTRE Point owner Almacantar has bought part of Canary Wharf Group and Qatari Diar’s controversial Shell Centre scheme on London’s South Bank, which faced opposition last year for obstructing views of the Houses of Parliament.
The developer has spent over £550m buying One and Two Southbank Place in Waterloo, making it one of the largest deals completed in the South Bank’s history.
One Southbank Place is already pre-let to Shell and will provide headquarters for the oil giant’s downstream business when completed in 2018. The second office site is being built speculatively but is expected to fetch rents of over £60 per square feet.
The office sites form part of Canary Wharf and Qatari Diar’s joint venture Braeburn Estates’ wider 1.5m sq ft Southbank Place redevelopment.
The Shell Centre’s existing 27-storey tower will remain, but other parts of the complex will be replaced with 877 new homes, offices and shops across eight new buildings – the tallest of which is 37 storeys.
Almacantar has been under offer to buy the buildings for more than a year after a lengthy appeal put the sale on ice.
English Heritage, Westminster Council and local activist George Turner went to the high court to try to stop the scheme. However Eric Pickles, the former communities secretary, overruled their objections, arguing that the scheme will “enhance the character of the South Bank area”.