A REAL estate company has completed its regeneration of an office space on a major London street, near St Paul’s Cathedral.
Pembroke has completed its revitalisation of 120,414 sq ft of high-specification office and mixed-use space at 25 Cannon Street, unveiling a redesigned public garden.
Global law firm Dechert will be the largest tenant of the office space and will take occupancy in 2023, on a 15-year lease assignment.
Pembroke worked alongside architecture practice Buckley Gray Yeoman and construction partner BAM to reimagine the five-storey 25 Cannon Street.
The reinvigoration features a double-height reception and the creation of a new 5,400 sq ft roof terrace offering views of the Dome of St Paul’s Cathedral.
At ground level, Pembroke has repurposed space for new retail and F&B uses, that will extend the food and drink offer from vibrant Watling Street through to St Paul’s, enriching the day to evening experience in this central location.
Designed to enable more natural light and better air quality, the new energy-efficient workspace aims to “prioritise occupier wellbeing”.
25 Cannon Street has been engineered to a high-performance criteria targeting BREEAM Excellent and the building can now operate fully on renewable power.
From retaining the original stone façade and structure to reducing embodied carbon emissions through the construction process, sustainability has been central to the programme.
Nick Moldon, Senior Vice President and Head of UK and Germany at Pembroke, comments: “We’re immensely proud of what we have achieved at 25 Cannon Street working with the City of London Corporation and our project partners.
“This repositioning programme is strengthening the City’s offer of modern, high-spec office spaces, while adding vitality and day-to-night interest for visitors, to enrich their experience of this thoroughfare from St Paul’s through the bustling Watling Street.
“In the Reflection Garden, we’ve created an important oasis for connecting with nature, encouraging greater biodiversity and urban greening and we hope contributing to a vibrant and healthy neighbourhood for generations to come.”
The reimagined public space at 25 Cannon Street –the ‘Reflection Garden’ – is located opposite Festival Gardens at St Paul’s.
The garden was delivered with the City of London Corporation and landscape and garden design practice, Tom Stuart-Smith.
The garden aims to offer a space for visitors and the urban workforce to enjoy the wellbeing benefits of a tranquil green space, while providing new habitats for local wildlife and encouraging greater biodiversity in the city.
Chair of the City of London Corporation’s Property Investment Board, Andrien Meyers, said: “The newly refurbished 25 Cannon Street is a welcome addition to the Square Mile’s top-quality office, retail and leisure offering.
“In particular, the City Corporation was pleased to support the new public garden for both workers and visitors to enjoy.
“With most of the office space already let, it is clear that recovery is well underway, and we hope schemes like this will continue to draw people back into the City post-pandemic.”
Paul White, Founding Director of Buckley Gray Yeoman, added: “The building’s historically significant position demanded that our approach was sensitive, but sophisticated.
“We achieved this by creating an enlarged reception space that, together with a new public garden, creates a sensory entrance sequence for the building, which we have re-dressed in a new façade in a contemporary, yet contextualised finish.
“Internally, the office floors have been enlarged by infilling the original colonnade, removing several satellite cores and repurposing a basement plant area.”
The repositioning of 25 Cannon Street is Pembroke’s fifth major development project in London, having originally developed 25 Cannon Street itself in 2000.
It has been completed a few years after Pembroke’s 4 Cannon Street development across the road.
