Sellar to unveil design changes to £1.5bn Liverpool Street station following listing upgrade

Sellar is preparing to unveil design changes to its £1.5bn redevelopment of Liverpool Street station following Historic England’s decision to expand the site’s listed status.

Last week, the government’s heritage adviser amended its listing for the grade II-listed terminus to include parts of the building which were added during a 1980s rebuild, while the neighbouring Andaz hotel, formerly the Great Eastern Hotel, has also had its listed status upgraded from grade II to grade II*.

The move will potentially create difficulties for the Herzog & de Meuron-designed scheme, which has stirred up a storm of protest from campaigners and heritage groups over its perceived impact on the Victorian-era site.

A planning application will now be submitted later than planned, with Sellar development director Barry Ostle telling Building he expects the plans to be lodged with the City at the end of April. They had previously been scheduled to be submitted no later than March.

The Shard developer is working with Network Rail on the job which will see around one million sq ft of mixed-use space created in two overstation blocks with a total height of 108.5m

The station will also be upgraded at a cost of around £450m with its concourse space due to be doubled, new public realm created and new lifts, escalators and ticket barriers added.

The Andaz hotel, which was built in 1884 and designed by Charles Barry Jr and Edward Middleton Barry, the sons of Palace of Westminster architect Charles Barry, will be converted into commercial space with the hotel moving into a new 15-storey block above, which will be cantilevered over the existing building.

Significantly, Historic England did not decide to list some elements of the 1980s redevelopment including the entrance towers on Liverpool Street and Bishopsgate and the 50 Liverpool Street building, which currently houses a McDonalds restaurant. These elements will be demolished as part of the Sellar scheme and replaced with public realm.

Ostle said elements of the above station development will change under revised plans due to be showcased at a second public consultation on 19 January, including a new roof garden above the Andaz hotel and the design of the overstation blocks to ensure they sit within the Victorian setting of the existing buildings.

Ostle said: “We’ve been listening to views of the City, to other architectural commentators and I think the scheme that will emerge in terms of the public consultation will have responded to people’s views that have come through over the last couple of months and I think you will see some fantastic enhancements to it.

“What is emerging is a building that I would describe as having an extremely calm, almost serene feel to it that would sit in a very respectful counter-position to the Victorian building. I think it would be, in my language, a building that will be saying ‘hey, look at the hotel, don’t look at me’,” he added.

Historic England said the listing review was requested both by Sellar and by campaigners, with the assessment aiming to provide clarity about the station and the Andaz hotel to inform the emerging proposals for both sites.

> Also read: Heritage groups renew promise to fight Liverpool Street station scheme

The group has previously voiced its “deep concerns” about the scheme which it said would have a “severe impact on the Bishopsgate Conservation Area, and more widely on the extraordinary historic character of the City of London”. 

“The scheme would trample on the listed station and hotel rather than showcase their heritage. The 16-storey tower and bulk of development proposed above the station is so large that it is likely to encroach on views of some of London’s great landmarks, including those of St Paul’s Cathedral protected under the London Views Management Framework,” the group said in October. 

Ostle said Sellar had asked for the listing assessment because the firm “felt it was important to have more certainty about the significance of the heritage assets to inform how we could progress our proposals”.

He said the project team was “very comfortable” with the move and had “no issue” with it. “We’re delighted to have the clarity and it’s exactly in line with what we’re doing,” he said.

And he hit back at campaigners who he argued had misunderstood the proposals, which he insisted would sensitively restore the listed heritage assets and provide an essential upgrade to a station which was “failing dramatically”.

“There’s a lot of fake news around. People are saying we’re going to pull the hotel down. We’re restoring the damn thing, we’re not pulling it down,” he said, adding: “It’s not a whole scale wrecking ball, it’s a hugely sensitive and multi-dimensional project using world class architects in a really forensic way.”

A 1980s roof extension to the hotel will also be removed, which Ostle said would return the building back to its “original purity”.

The developer’s aim is to transform the station and its surroundings in a way which is similar to the redevelopment of King’s Cross St Pancras station. “Liverpool Street station at the moment is a station that doesn’t work, and neither is it a destination and it doesn’t have any civic space,” he said. 

Others working on the Liverpool Street deal, known as Project Mersey, include cost consultant and project manager G&T, engineer WSP and landscape firm Townshend. Mace is providing pre-construction advice.