Wetherell Mayfairs Fitnes Properties

Although St George's Day falls on April 23, it is not a designated national holiday, so the majority of events around are taking place this weekend.

A garden-themed St George's Day Festival is being held in Trafalgar Square. It will feature pop-up gardening installations, floral art and exhibits of growing your own fruit and veg. A bandstand will host traditional and modern musicians; there will also be entertainers, face painting, and a treasure trail for children.

Saturday, April 21, 12pm-6pm
Free
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LONDON - In 1677 Sir Thomas Grosvenor married one Mary Davies. No doubt it was a love match but it also brought benefits of a less romantic nature.

Mary inherited an area of empty land known as the Five Fields, which amounted to 500 acres, or 167 hectares, north of the Thames and to the west of the City of London.

Today those acres are known as Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico and are still owned by a descendant of Thomas and Mary: Gerald Cavendish, the sixth Duke of Westminster, who, as chairman of the Grosvenor Group, is the fourth richest person in Britain, with a fortune estimated at £7 billion, or $11 billion. In 2010 the group made a profit of £16 million in Britain alone, with assets valued at £3.5 billion.

It would be understandable if the duke sat back and let the money pour in, especially as the value of the 2,000 properties owned by the group in prime central London is pretty much inured to the vagaries of world economic decline, buoyed as it is by the huge number of foreign buyers -- more than 50 nationalities came house hunting here last year -- and to a shortage in supply.

But the group is not taking that easy route to steady profits. Instead it is stepping up investment in its traditional territory: the 300 acres it owns in Mayfair and Belgravia.

Last year alone it invested £140 million in 22 separate transactions because, as the chief executive, Peter Vernon, said, "We decided to shift away from major regeneration projects and instead focus on London residential, doing what we do best."

The group has been regaining control of leased buildings on its property and turning them into the kind of upscale housing traditionally in short supply in the British capital.

"My view is that it's our core business -- it's what we're all about," Mr. Vernon said.

Grosvenor's most ambitious current project is a row of apartments worth £240 million that lurk luxuriously behind the elegant stucco facade of 3-10 Grosvenor Crescent, Belgravia.

The Grade II listed terrace was built in the 1860s and, after five years as the headquarters for the British Red Cross, has been converted into 15 properties, with five apartments over three or four stories ranging from the huge (4,570 square feet, about 425 square meters) to the immense (10,800 square feet) with seven lateral and duplex apartments (2,336 to 4,413 square feet) and three lateral from 829 to 1,470 square feet.

The Grand Apartment, as it has been named, will be marketed at £40 million-plus.

It takes up two floors of Number 7 and, like all the properties has been carefully refurbished to combine the old with the push-button new.

With ceilings up to 12.5 feet, or 3.78 meters, high, it still has the original dark paneling in a dining room designed for the elaborate dinners of the 19th century, the architraves and much of the intricate cornicing have been preserved and complemented with hand-painted wallpaper.

All the properties, which come with a 999-year lease and a share of the freehold on the building, have the kind of fittings expected in this market, including bathrooms in Carrara marble -- the Grosvenor team made more than 80 trips to Italy to make sure the grain of the slabs was just so. There also are walk-in closets in cherry wood, while the wallpaper comes with a metal finish in one apartment, another is in horsehair plaster.

One touch of a remote control and the door to a mews house in the cobbled street behind swings open to reveal the entrance to a shared underground parking garage for 22 cars.

"We made sure the cobbles were level enough to allow a Lamborghini with its 65-millimeter clearance to drive over them without scraping," said Jonathan Wyatt, associate director of the group's development division.

He added: "What we are doing is taking historical elements and bringing them back to life. Numbers 3-10 were in bad condition so we have breathed life into them. But it is not just buildings we are acquiring and improving, we have upgraded the public realm in Mount Street, Mayfair and Belgravia's Elizabeth Street by widening the pedestrian area and removing the clutter of unnecessary signs."

The group also has plans for neighboring apartments at numbers 11-15 Grosvenor Crescent and is opening a boutique hotel, The Beaumont, in 2014 on Balderston Street in Mayfair; an office and retail block in Davies Street; and an apartment block and the site for a restaurant in North Audley Street.

It is also diversifying into the rental market. An old bank in Green Street, around the corner from the U.S. Embassy, has been turned into three triplex apartments.

The exterior still has its original cupola and red brick facade. Inside, there are the original tall windows and sloping ceilings that add appeal to the large open-plan living and kitchen/dining areas and outdoor terraces.

Not only are there leather-lined bathrooms and glass-finished kitchen cupboards, but there is a bespoke unit to hold a small coffee-making machine, complete with slots for the capsules.

Who would pay the asking rent of £5,000 per week? Grosvenor is envisaging interest from those in the world of finance who are based temporarily in London, or are waiting for a suitable property to come on the market.

In London, that can be a long wait. Grosvenor says an average of only 150 properties -- from one-bedroom apartments to town houses -- become available in Mayfair every year. But Peter Wetherell, of the eponymous Mayfair agency, notes: "A report we prepared in June 2002 stated that there were 124 properties for sale in Mayfair. Fast forward a decade and there are now only 68 instructions, nearly 50 percent down."

Despite the small supply, demand is sustained by foreign investors. Latest research from the real estate agent Savills analyzed the dynamics of the prime London new-build market and found that two out of three of the buyers today come from abroad, compared with one out of four as recently as 2009.

They generated a net £1.4 billion inflow of equity in 2011, which gives London more in common with Hong Kong and Singapore real estate than with the wider British property market.

While the real estate agency Knight Frank acknowledged the "historic undersupply" in a report in January, it also said: "Ironically, economic and even political turmoil have provided the impetus for growth. Our outlook remains that prices will rise 5 percent in 2012, driven in large part by international demand and relatively constrained supply."

Stuart Bailey of the Knight Frank Belgravia branch, added: "Belgravia provides a sanctuary for the global wealthy. It embodies all those qualities of 'Englishness' that is the very reason they choose buy homes there in the first place."

By Richard Holledge
The New York Times - Friday 2nd March 2012
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As Belstaff prepare to open a new London flagship store on New Bond Street, Bloomberg report that the brand, now owned by Swiss-based Labelux Group GmbH, have agreed to pay a record rent for a large store in London.

Belstaff will pay £3 million in initial rent for a property on 135/137 New Bond Street, according to Savills Plc.

The rent for the 25,000 square-foot (2,323 square-metre) heritage-protected building equates to £840 per square foot. That exceeds the previous record of £670 a square-foot rent that Italian fashion brand Missoni agreed to pay for 138 New Bond Street in February 2011, according to Savills.

"The deal demonstrates the continued expansion northwards of the prime pitch on Bond Street," said Anthony Selwyn, the director at Savills who acted for the landlord.

Rents on Bond Street and London's other main shopping strips in the West End are escalating as retailers compete for the best locations. The district avoided the last recession as the weak pound lifted tourism, while retailers reported a 3.1 per cent increase in sales for last year compared with a 0.1 per cent in U.K. retail sales.

The highest rent on Bond Street is the £965 that jeweller Piaget agreed to pay in December 2009 for their 169 Old Bond Street boutique, a much smaller 3,500 square-foot space.

The Telegraph - Fashion
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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

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