Lendlease in running for £200m City block

Lendlease has made the cut to bid for a £200m City office block on a site near Moorgate that has been eyeing redevelopment since 1997.

Building understands it is one of the first jobs the firm has been shortlisted for since its Australian parent put the firm up for sale at the end of May.

Several clients have told Building they are reluctant to shortlist the contractor since the news was announced – because of uncertainty over who will buy it and whether the firm will even exist.

At the time of its announcement five weeks ago, Lendlease’s parent said it wanted to wrap up a sale within 18 months.

But it is understood the team behind the 22-storey Tenter House project has been impressed enough by Lendlease’s reassurances in the UK to put them on the shortlist.

The others bidding the job are McLaren and Mace, whose construction arm last week announced that Rob Lemming had become managing director for its public sector and life sciences business while Alister Grey has been made boss of its technology and manufacturing division.

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The Tenter House scheme at 45 Moorfields is the fourth set of proposals and the seventh application for the site’s freeholder Metropolitan Properties.

Fresh plans drawn up by David Walker Architects were submitted earlier this year with the existing 11-storey 1960s building finally being dismantled 27 years after its demolition was first authorised by the City of London Corporation.

Metropolitan was given the go ahead for plans designed by architect Pringle Richards Sharratt (PRS) to replace Tenter House with a 13-storey office building in 1997.

This consent was then renewed in 2002, 2008 and 2012 but never implemented, before PRS was swapped out for David Walker Architects and a heavily revised plan for a much larger building was submitted in 2017.

These proposals were approved in 2018 but revised in the months afterward to accommodate new security arrangements on the site and approved for a second time in 2020.

This plan was then scrapped and the building redesigned again by David Miller Architects.

The latest version has replaced the fully glazed facade of the 2018 consent with a white-coloured grid-like structure featuring planted balconies and roof gardens.

The project team includes development advisor JLL, project manager Buro Four, planning consultant Montagu Evans, QS Exigere, structural engineer AKT II, services engineer WSP, landscape architect Townshend Landscape Architects and townscape consultant Tavernor.