The first-class Post Building, in London’s West End, has been sold for around £600million, it is reported.
The 320,000 square foot office redevelopment, which is a former Royal Mail sorting office, is being acquired by Spanish billionaire, Amancio Ortega, reports the national press.
The Post Building is a joint venture by Brockton Capital and Oxford Properties. It is believed that the purchase was completed by Amancio Ortega’s investment company, Pontegadea Inmobiliaria SL.
The Post Building on Museum Street in Holborn, features:
- 263,000 square feet of flexible Grade A office space
- 126,000 square feet pre-leased to McKinsey & Company
- 49,000 square feet pre-leased to Rothesay Life
- 88,000 square feet remaining.
The offices have high ceilings that reach up to six metres, rather than the standard 2.6 metres, creating “an unprecedented sense of space and volume, designed to stimulate ideas and improve working life.”
Volume and generosity
Architect, Simon Morris, of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, (AHMM) says, “It has a volume and generosity that you don’t normally discover; it’s something you’ll never be able to build again.”
The Post Building’s vast cubic capacity provides space and maximum flexibility, including floating decks on levels one and two.
The decks ‘float’ above the main office space on the first and second levels, providing flexible, multifunctional spaces both above and below the decks.
The decks mirror the trend for flexible workplaces without hindering the flow of the central floor plan, which feature no columns.
Matthew Murphy, senior architect at AHMM, explains, “We made sure the decks hung from the ceiling rather than propping them up from the ground. We have a series of hangers: they are like the conveyor belts in the old sorting office but they are moving office workers around instead of post.”
Topping it off is a 7,500 square foot rooftop garden on the 9th floor – the largest in the West End. Bloomsbury can be viewed to the north, Holborn and the City to the west and Canary Wharf and beyond to the south.
The garden is part-English country garden, part-cruise liner deck. The ‘bow’ of the space juts out looking northwest along New Oxford Street.
It features a gin terrace, which looks out over what was once known as ‘Gin Lane’, an area of St Giles immortalized in a work by Hogarth. On the south side will be a herb garden. There will also be smaller private sections with seating areas for meetings or private work.
Amancio Ortega is one of the richest men in Europe and is the founder of the Inditex fashion group, which is behind the Zara chain.
