Ken Announces Expected LBT Pre Let

London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, has announced that Transport for London will be taking approximately 27,000 square metres of space in the bottom floors of the approved London Bridge Tower as one of their main offices in London bringing to an end speculation on the worst kept secret in the London office market that the developers had found anchor tenants.

Negotiations are at an advanced stage with the developers who have been flogging the space for several years now in the hope of a significant pre-let before they start construction. An agreement in principle between developers Sellar Properties / CLS Group and TFL has already been made and the lawyers are now adding the dots and commas to the contract. The hotel the building also contains was let last year to Shangra Lai Group.

Central to the appeal of LBT to TFL is both symbolism of the project that their occupancy can help realise, the close proximity of it to a major transport interchange and also City Hall plus the potential offices of Palestra only five minutes away. Not only do they get a brand new landmark H.Q but Ken gets to leave a lasting modern architectural legacy to London stamping his vision into the capital as noticeably as anyone has in the past.

Current occupiers of Southwark Towers that makes up the current site, financial services firm PWC, are also at an advanced stage of negotiation for taking space in the project, with a desire to occupy space in the replacement London Bridge House next door, a move that will free up the LBT site for redevelopment.

Although not the biggest pre-lets in the market these two are by far the most significant because of what they represent - namely the construction of what will be the tallest building in western Europe at 310 metres. Construction will be starting in 2007.