Wetherell Mayfairs Fitnes Properties

Modernisation plans have left traders worried that they might have to shut up shop.

Exit the London Underground at Green Park station, currently undergoing a £48 million renovation in time for the Olympics, and you undoubtedly feel right in the heart of the 21st century. Hedge fund managers stride purposefully to work near Berkeley Square, clutching latte comfort blankets. Tourists pick up a Boris Bike or head for the numerous international fashion brands on Old Bond Street.

Walk a few yards further, however, and you’re plunged back into the 19th century. The Burlington Arcade, opened in 1819 and relatively unchanged since, attracts four million visitors a year to its enclosed, red-carpeted corridor. Top-hatted beadles, a private police force recruited from Lord Cavendish’s 10th Hussars (the Arcade was his idea, to stop people throwing oyster shells, bottles and dead cats into his back garden), patrol the strip, checking that no one is whistling, running or opening umbrellas.

And while the upmarket prostitutes who used to operate in the rooms overhead have shifted their wares to the internet, many of the jewellery and luggage shops here are more than 100 years old. Hancocks has been making the Victoria Cross since 1856. Globe-Trotter has made suitcases for everyone from Churchill to the Queen, who used hers for her honeymoon.

Today, however, the Burlington Arcade is the focus of a row between new owners trying to renovate it for a high-end international market and a strange coalition of worried family jewellers supported by the likes of Michael Winner and Dame Judi Dench.

Back in January, Daniel Bexfield, a silver dealer who’s been in the trade for 30 years, 13 of them in the Burlington Arcade, was told by the new owners that his shop no longer fitted their desired image. Nothing personal, but when his lease came up for renewal in 2013, it would be quietly terminated.

Such an action is, of course, not unusual in itself and entirely the prerogative of the owners; the Burlington Arcade was bought for £104 million last year, split equally between Joseph Sitt, a New York-based property investor who runs Thor Equities, a hedge fund with lots of shopping malls in America, and Meyer Bergman, a European real estate investment and fund management firm. The Burlington Arcade, which was previously owned by another hedge fund – and before that the Prudential – has seen numerous shopkeepers come and go, from Montblanc pens to “A La Reine Astrid” chocolatiers. Top rents are now around £600 a square foot, more than double the average rent of £275 a square foot six years ago.

What gives the story more spice are the owners’ plans for the development of this historic site, which include employing a controversial architect, spending £5 million on a “blinged-up” redesign and, many allege, squeezing small shopkeepers with extortionate rents and demands for shares in their profits in the hope of replacing them with premium luxury brands such as Prada, Gucci and Chanel.

A sign already boasts that Jimmy Choo is “coming soon”. One shopkeeper, who did not want to be named, has said he was offered £1 million by a Russian, just to secure a lease. Gossip abounds of people turning up ostensibly to discuss new leases with shopkeepers, while carrying tape measures to size up the units for bigger, better clients.

“I love this arcade,” says Bexfield, a gentle man energised by the zeal of having nothing to lose. “It’s the last bastion of small business, it’s quintessentially British and it’s disappearing.” In the past few weeks he’s written to every MP and London councillor, while simultaneously piquing the interest of English Heritage, the Georgian Group (who campaign against the neglect of Georgian buildings) and a smattering of celebrities. His urgency is fuelled by the discovery, on the Westminster Council planning page, of an application to install uplighting, marble floors (Bexfield calls them “Dubai style”) and three large steel structures by Antony Gormley, creator of the Angel of the North. The consultation period closes early next month.

Bexfield is particularly incensed that Peter Marino, an American retail expert who likes to boast that his stores “aren’t built to last”, has been engaged to help with the design. “He is the Lady Gaga of architects,” says Bexfield, of a man known for his taste in leather biking clothes. “If I had a new fashion arcade in Bond Street, I’d definitely want him to design it. But the last thing I’d want him to do is restore a historic arcade.” Bexfield is not short of sympathisers on Burlington Arcade – although many refer inquiries back to head offices. “The ambience of the Burlington Arcade lends itself especially well to a brand like ours and we would sincerely hope that this respectful balance remains unchanged for the next 100 years,” says a careful Pippa Stephens, manager of Globe-Trotter.

Richard Ogden, a jeweller whose father moved to the arcade almost 60 years ago, is less prepared to pull his punches. “If this architect wants to dress up as one of the Village People that’s of no concern to me,” he says. “What is worrying is that the owners are interested only in making money, not in the arcade’s aesthetic or its history.”

The profit incentive to the owners in doing this is self-evident. Tourists spend more than £2 billion a year in this part of London. “If they can get big names in, they can negotiate on an international basis,” says Ogden.

Trevor Pickett, who’s been in the arcade for 32 years as managing director of Pickett, maker of luxury leather goods, injects a note of realism which he claims is shared by many of his neighbours.

“If you’re going to have a shop in a major thoroughfare, you have to pay,” he says, while taking pains to sympathise with Bexfield’s plight. “You can’t expect any landlord to take less than the market rent. If we’re squeezed out, we’re squeezed out. Otherwise the only solution would be some sort of charitable trust filled with nice nostalgic things that people look at but don’t buy.”

A spokesman for Meyer Bergman, the co-owner, has argued that their intention is to restore, not ruin, the arcade, pointing out that features such as the lights are no longer original. Pickett agrees that the new designs are “rather beautiful”, flooding with light the roof of the arcade, which is currently “rather dark and horrible in the winter”.

A couple of weeks ago Mark Lord, the Head Beadle, also weighed into the debate, writing a letter to the Westminster Chronicle in which he claimed to have witnessed a decline in visitors over the past nine years. The new owners’ plans would, he argued, protect jobs such as his own and look after the arcade’s historic character by reintroducing the daily unlocking-of-the-gates ceremony.

Thus the battle lines are drawn for a conflict over aesthetics and profits, nous and nostalgia, a nation of small shopkeepers facing an uncertain world of global finance. And just about the only thing one can say with certainty is that it’s not over yet.

“I’m going to start looking for a new place after Christmas,” says Bexfield. “But for now I’m focused on this campaign. This sort of thing is happening all over Britain. I don’t want to walk down a personality-free shopping mall. In 10 years’ time, if I’m not in the arcade, I’d like to be able to walk through it and say I had a hand in saving it.”

By Iain Hollingshead
26 Oct 2011 - The Telegraph

Click to see the original article

Sue Attwood goes in search of Regency London and finds much of it still just as described in Georgette Heyer's historical novels.

"It is the greatest bore to go out walking with any of them," remonstrates Frederica, the heroine of Georgette Heyer's eponymous novel, when reproved for walking without a maid, "because they will dawdle or say their shoes hurt them". Maidless myself, and in comfortable shoes, I stand at the top of the steps from the Mall to Waterloo Place and Regent Street beyond, and have an impression of how Regency London looked: magnificent. Then I begin to walk.
THE WALK
1 From the steps, look left towards The Athenaeum Club. It was built over the western corner of the Regent's demolished Carlton House and Wellington, who was a member, had a mounting block, which is still there, placed on the opposite pavement.
Walk left into Pall Mall, and first right into St James's Square, where Deborah Grantham's aunt had her gaming parlour in Faro's Daughter. Numbers 20 and 33 are by Robert Adam. At 16, on the site of what is now the East India Club, the Regent was dining with Mrs Boehm on June 21 1815 when Major Percy, four French eagle standards protruding from the window of his post-chaise-and-four, clattered into the square to confirm the victory at Waterloo.
2 In King Street, opposite Christie's, is the site of Almack's Assembly Rooms, now a modern office building. Turn left down narrow Heyeresque Crown Passage and right into Pall Mall before going up the right-hand side of St James's Street. At number 3, Berry Bros & Rudd, wine merchants, display huge coffee scales on which Beau Brummell, Byron, boxer Tom Cribb and others were weighed, their details recorded in ledgers which you can ask to see. Apothecaries charged to weigh their customers; Berry's, then a grocery shop, did not. I asked if they sold Mountain Malaga as provided by Kit Fancot in False Colours. Sadly, they don't.
3 Tucked against Berry Bros is a passage leading to tiny Georgian Pickering Place, number 5 appears in Regency Buck as a gaming hell, and across the way at Truefitt & Hill, number 17, they've been selling cut-throat razors and pomade since 1805. Lock & Co, at number 6, began as hatters in the 17th century. The Duke of Sale in The Foundling has a Lock hat. "He was not a flash cull… He was a gentleman of high breeding. His hat bore the name of Lock upon the band". Inside the shop, in a glass case, are hats Lock made for Wellington and Nelson.
4 At number 37, near the top of St James's, is White's, with its infamous bow-window. No respectable lady would be seen in this street of gentlemen's clubs but in The Grand Sophy the heroine scandalously drives a curricle "the length of that disgraceful street".
Beau Brummell notoriously sat in the window with other dandies observing the passers-by. They would not acknowledge "salutations from acquaintances in the street if they were seated in the window".
5 Turn right into Piccadilly, like Judith Taverner in Regency Buck, who then knew herself to be "in the heart of the fashionable quarter". Follow her past Hatchards, the bookshop, "with its bow windows filled with all the newest publications", then cross over to Albany where Captain Ware had his set of chambers in The Foundling. Byron lived here, and Heyer herself.
6 Go back a hundred yards and up Burlington Arcade, built in 1819. At the top, turn left, then left again into Old Bond Street. At the bottom, turn right into Piccadilly, crossing the road at the Ritz. Go into Green Park, skirt the Underground renovations and follow the path parallel to Piccadilly. Just beyond the Park Lane Hotel, which you can see over the hedge, is a grassy mound covering the demolished Ranger's Lodge where Frederica's Baluchistan hound ignominiously "herded" the Green Park cows.
7 Backtrack a couple of hundred yards, emerge from the park by the blue iron gates, cross to Half Moon Street where the Sheringhams settled in Friday's Child, and make a beeline for The Only Running Footman in Charles Street for refreshment, possibly with a Georgette Heyer novel for company.

What to avoid
Mount Street appears in various Heyer books but was "improved" in the 19th century and is now Victorian.
Don't attempt to enter Hyde Park by the Stanhope Gate like many of Heyer's characters. The gate was removed when Park Lane was widened. Try the Curzon, Achilles or Apsley Gates.
Don't bother looking for the Temple of Concord or the Queen's Basin in Green Park. Both are long gone.
Avoid overdoing the alcoholic refreshments en route, as in "Take a look at poor Prinny, he's a lesson to us all" – The Grand Sophy.
FURTHER INFORMATION
A printable map of Mayfair in 1811 can be found at www.oldlondonmaps.com/1811pages/1811MAIN.html. The walk might continue with a detour through the 18th-century enclave of Shepherd’s Market, emerging opposite the Saudi Embassy (18th-century Crewe House) in Curzon Street. Beau Brummell’s home in Chesterfield Street is nearby and the walk might end in Hyde Park. Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller by Jennifer Kloester (William Heinemann, £20) is published on October 6.

THE BEST HOTELS FOR HEYER FANS
Haymarket Hotel £££
Convenient for the National Portrait Gallery and the beginning of the walk (1 Suffolk Place; 020 7470 4000; www.firmdale.com; doubles from £312 per night).
Flemings Hotel £££
In a pretty street which features in Friday’s Child (7-12 Half Moon Street; 020 7499 0000; www.flemings-mayfair.co.uk; doubles from £378).
Dukes Hotel £££
For those possessed of “an easy competence”, tucked away discreetly in a courtyard off St James’s (St James’s Place; 020 7491 4840; www.dukeshotel.com; doubles from £420).

THE BEST RESTAURANTS
The Only Running Footman ££
Foodie pub said to have been much frequented by the servants of “the neighbouring gentry” and recommended in False Colours as a good place to start a rumour spreading (5 Charles Street; 020 7499 2988; www.therunningfootmanmayfair.com).
Fortnum & Mason ££-£
Suppliers of preserves, honey and dried fruits to Wellington’s officers. Mr Heathersett in April Lady offers Nell Cardross a consoling ice cream at Gunter’s. The Parlour Restaurant on the first floor of Fortnum’s provides the same service (181 Piccadilly; 020 7734 8040; www.fortnumandmason.com).
Wiltons £££
Scarily expensive classic, established 1742 selling oysters in the Haymarket. Excellent traditional British food fit for Heyer heroes (55 Jermyn Street; 020 7629 9955; www.wiltons.co.uk).

THE INSIDE TRACK
National Portrait Gallery (St Martin’s Place; 020 7306 0055; www.npg.org.uk) has a dazzling second-floor display of Regency portraits.
Apsley House (149 Piccadilly; 020 7499 5676; www.apsleyhouseguide.co.uk) is Wellington’s London home where he personally supervised the redecoration in the Regency style. Look out for the paintings, the 90ft Waterloo Gallery and the Sèvres dinner service commissioned by Napoleon for the Empress Josephine.
Spencer House (27 St James’s Place; 020 7514 1958; www.spencerhouse.co.uk). Magnificent 18th-century private palace, remodelled by Henry Holland who was engaged by the Prince Regent to work on Carlton House. Eight state rooms. Hour-long guided tours. Sundays only (not January or August).

Taken from The Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/londonandsoutheast/8789783/Regency-London-Let-a-romantic-novelist-be-your-guide.html