Capital & Counties to sell West London property for £240m
Capital & Counties (Capco) is in talks to sell the Empress State Building in West London to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac), which has leased it since 1961, according to other media outlets.
The sales price is estimated as £240 million ($337 million).
The Empress State Building was built between 1958 and 1961 on the site of the former Empress Hall. It was briefly the tallest commercial building in London until Millbank Tower was built in 1962.
The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime has an existing lease on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Service, which comes to an end in 2019.
On April 3, 2014, the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham approved Capco’s proposal for a change of use from commercial to residential, when MOPAC’s lease ends.
The Empress State Building will now be integrated into the Earls Court Masterplan, adding 580,000 square feet of residential floor space to the overall Masterplan area.
The new scheme proposes the creation of more than 440 new homes of which over 100 are affordable. Improvements will also be made to the façade of the existing building and internal amenities created for residents including children’s play areas, 211 car parking spaces within the basement area, 468 cycle parking spaces, 21 motorcycle spaces and a new retail unit to complement the new High Street.
