Grade II-listed Holden House scheme to start next year

Derwent London are moving ahead with their redevelopment of a listed corner block on Oxford Street after replacing Hopkins with DSDHA as the scheme’s architect.

The developer said in a trading update this morning that it was finalising the design of the 150,000sq ft Holden House scheme and would start construction in the middle of next year.

Derwent submitted an initial planning application for the corner of Oxford Street and Rathbone Place in 2017 proposing an eight-storey retail-led scheme under plans designed by Hopkins.

This was approved by Westminster council later that year despite opposition from Historic England due to the addition of two storeys to the roof of the grade II-listed Holden House, which was previously known as Evelyn House. 

Derwent then appointed DSDHA last year to draw up revised plans increasing the scheme’s amount of office space and its sustainability credentials along with changes to internal layouts and the removal of two of the scheme’s four basement levels.

Holden House 4

The scheme occupies an entire corner block on Oxford Street and Rathbone Place

The firm said its purpose for repositioning the scheme was responding to the “changing needs of retail and office tenants” and reduction of embodied carbon by reducing the extent of basement excavation.

The revisions were approved in September last year with a second amendment to the building’s facades signed off by Westminster in December.

Derwent’s trading update said the Holden House site was one of three major schemes in the West End which constituted the next phase of its pipeline.

The other schemes are AHMM’s 240,000sq ft redevelopment of an entire city block in Marylebone, 50 Baker Street, and a 108,000sq ft refurbishment of Greencoat and Gordon House in Victoria.

The firm said its capital expenditure in the first three quarters of this was £145m, including its work on the three West End schemes. It added that its longer term pipeline extends to 1.1m sq ft from 2027.

Derwent and Hopkins and have been contacted for comment.

Topics