British Land : Commences Development of 4 Kingdom Street, Paddington Central

British Land has committed to developing 4 Kingdom Street, a new 146,000 sq ft office building at Paddington Central, and is now on site.

Following the acquisition of the Paddington Central campus in July 2013, British Land appointed architects Allies and Morrison to review and update the design of 4 Kingdom Street which was originally granted planning consent in 2010.  In 2014, Westminster City Council approved changes to the scheme which retain the consented bulk and massing, while providing increased flexibility to the office floorplates along with improved amenities for occupiers.

The re-designed nine storey building will have typical floorplates of 15,000 sq ft, with each floor having a large corner terrace and a glass pod designed as a creative meeting space. The core of the building has been relocated to maximise space and efficiency, creating more flexible floorplates and greater optionality for occupiers.  The building includes a communal roof terrace which provides outside space for break-out, entertaining and sporting facilities.

Practical completion of the scheme is expected in early 2017.

Robert Samuel, Head of Office Development at British Land, said: "We are excited to be starting our development plans at Paddington Central, and are pleased with the enhanced design of 4 Kingdom Street. The campus already attracts high calibre occupiers from a broad range of industry sectors, and is increasingly seen as a natural extension of London's West End office market."

About British Land 
We are one of Europe's largest publicly listed real estate companies. We own, manage, develop and finance a portfolio of high quality commercial property, focused on retail locations around the UK and London Offices & Residential. We have total assets in the UK, owned or managed of £19.0 billion (British Land share of which is £12.8 billion), as valued at 30 September 2014. Our properties are home to over 1,000 different organisations and receive over 340 million visits each year. Our objective is to deliver long-term and sustainable total returns to our shareholders and we do this by focusing on Places People Prefer. People have a choice where they work, shop and live and we aim to create outstanding places which make a positive difference to people's everyday lives. Our customer orientation enables us to develop a deep understanding of the people who use our places. We employ a lean team of experts, who have the skills to translate this understanding into creating the right places, and we have an efficient capital structure which is able to effectively finance these places.

UK Retail assets account for 54% of our portfolio. As the UK's largest listed owner and manager of retail space, our portfolio is well matched to the different ways people shop today, from major regional shopping centres to single occupier locations. We are focused on being the destination of choice for retailers and their customers by being the best provider of spaces and services. Comprising around 25 million sq ft of retail space across retail parks, superstores, shopping centres, department stores and leisure assets, the retail portfolio is modern, flexible and adaptable to a wide range of formats.

Our Office and Residential portfolio, which accounts for 46% of our portfolio is focused on London.  We have an attractive mix of high quality buildings in well managed environments and a pipeline of development projects which will add significantly to our portfolio. Increasingly, our offices are in mixed-use environments which include retail and residential elements. Our 7.9 million sq ft of high quality office space includes Regent's Place and Paddington Central in the West End and Broadgate, the premier city office campus (50% share).

Our size and substance demands a responsible approach to business. We believe leadership on issues such as sustainability helps drive our performance and is core to the delivery of our overall objective of driving shareholder value and creating Places People Prefer.

Further details can be found on the British Land website at www.britishland.com

About Paddington Central
Paddington Central is an 11 acre mixed use campus in London's West End comprising seven separate modern buildings, and a retail and leisure cluster, totalling 1.2 million sq ft. The area is well served by Paddington station, a major London rail and tube interchange with excellent connections to Heathrow airport via the Heathrow Express which will further benefit from the opening of Crossrail in 2018. Paddington will be one of only three Crossrail stations in the West End, which will improve connections from the West End to the City and Canary Wharf.

British Land owns three of the existing buildings, together with the retail and leisure cluster totalling 610,000 sq ft.  Occupiers include Nokia, Statoil, Microsoft, Kapersky Lab, i2i Events and Accor. On completion of the developments at 4 Kingdom Street and 5 Kingdom Street, the campus will grow to 1.6 million sq ft, with British Land wholly owning just over 1.0 million sq ft.

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