New offices proposed for UBS in Broadgate
December 11, 2010 by Rob Powell
Filed under Blog
A planning application for a huge new office block in Broadgate for investment bank, UBS, has been submitted.
The 12 storey building at 5 Broadgate would have 700,000 square feet of office space and include 4 trading floors.
The plans have been put forward jointly by British Land and the Blackstone group. The building, which is cubic in profile, has been designed by Ken Shuttleworth at Make.
Current office blocks, 3, 4, and 6 Broadgate would make way for the huge development which would be adjacent to Exchange House.
British Land have outlined the public realm improvements that the office scheme will bring with it:
A new public route will be opened up east-west connecting Broadgate Circle with Sun Street Passage to provide a direct route to Liverpool Street Station and to Exchange Square to the north. A new ‘gateway space’, known as Sun Street Square, with a café at the base of 3 Finsbury will be created to provide a new pedestrian crossing to Crown Place and the northern approach to Finsbury Avenue Square will be redefined with new landscaping. Sun Street Square and Sun Street Passage both present an opportunity for the incorporation of public art, including an ‘art wall’.
Get more information and see an artist’s illustration at Offices.org.uk
Nearly the weekend
September 18, 2009 by Moorgate Mercurius
Filed under Blog
It’s been a busy week in City Towers. Not ‘exciting busy’ but ‘ho-hum busy’ as I’m sure some of you can relate to though in that time Mayor Boris has been off to New York to promote London however while he was away someone at TFL saw the opportunity to declutter the tube map of London, significantly by removing the river Thames. As you can tell from the photo the Thames is a pretty integral part of London and although City dwellers may know where it is it’s still a good reference point to have on a map don’t you think? I can’t imagine how tourists would feel trying to find the London Eye having been told “it’s on the Thames” when the Thames didn’t appear on one of the most significant London travel maps.
Now TFL apparently saw this as an “operational decision” and didn’t see the need to consult anyone but the subsequent outcry and sound of BoJo hitting the roof has since persuaded them otherwise and they’ll now find themselves ranked alongside the State of Indiana’s who once considered a proposal to set the value of pi to 3 (or 3.2, or 4) for convenience sake…
In other news Land Securities is in process of partnering with Blackstone for the latter to take on half of Broadgate, by Liverpool Street station. Frequent home of lunchtime attractions Broadgate is home to a £2.1bn debt of which Blackstone will apparently take on half and although I don’t imagine it’ll have many, if any, implications in the short-term perhaps its long-term future may now be a bit rosier.