The three acre site called Ham Yard in London’s Soho has been acquired for £30 million by husband and wife team Tim and Kit Kemp who are to develop it into a £90 million boutique hotel with housing through their business Firmdale Hotels.
Just off Regent Street, the hub of London’s shopping district, the site will become a 100 room hotel and 50,000 square feet of accommodation, of which a third will be affordable housing.
If planning goes through work will start at the beginning of next year.
To fund the project Firmdale will raise £56 million for a sale and leaseback of two of its six other London hotels – the Knightsbridge Hotel and Number 16, both in Kensington.
A German investment fund is interested in buying the freeholds.
The group is to open its first hotel outside London – the £49 million Crosby Street Hotel in the hip SoHo district of New York.
The new hotel in London will be the company’s flagship project and will be more luxurious and have more facilities that it’s other hotels.
‘This is our most exciting project to date. We will be creating a thrilling public space with a new access point for Soho from Great Windmill Street to Denman Street. This will add to the already vibrant atmosphere Soho offers,’ said Firmdale chairman Tim Kemp.
It is not often that such a site comes onto the market. It was put up for sale after liquidation proceedings were started against Windmill Developments, the site’s Gibraltar-registered owner.
In June, Ross Mansoori-Dara, one of the founders of City Lofts, the luxury apartment developer that failed last year, was rumoured to have won the bidding for Ham Yard. He is thought to have pulled out at the eleventh hour over financing issues, opening the door to Firmdale.
