Zara chief bags former BBC base in West End
Spanish billionaire and founder of popular fashion chain Zara Armancio Ortega has closed a deal purchasing luxury residential offices – and former BBC base – in the West End.
Ortega’s firm Pontegadea shelled out £82m for the 1920s building, the private firm announced today.
Last month Ortega purchased a luxury residential property with 120 apartments in Dublin for $109m.
This is part of a larger strategy to invest in multiple real estate assets, as evident in the fashion mogul’s firm’s luxury residential and office purchases in Canada and the US over recent years.
The buildings were originally constructed as printing works back in the 1920s. Prior to this deal, Standard Life Investments Long Lease Fund bought the offices from Kier Property in 2017 for £70m.
Kier had fully redeveloped and extended the building into a 42,000 square feet of office spaces. Standard Life had secured a 25-year lease with inflation-linked rent reviews.
The move from Ortega represents a boost for the West End after a slow start to 2023.
Savills, an estate agent, reports in their West End Investment Watch for January that only two transactions occurred in the first month of the year, with a combined value of just £165m.
This is in comparison to an average transaction volume of £493m for January over the past five years.