Ropemaker Place For Sale

The future of Ropemaker Place, a "bulk-scraper" office development for the London Borough of Islington only a few metres outside the City of London has been called into question following the announcement by the owner of the land DB Real Estate that they plan on selling the site for a cool £100 million following rumours they were so desperate for cash they wouldn't be able to take the scheme further and the liquidity of the fund was in question.

The approved 93 metre tall is on a prime spot only 2 minutes walk from Moorgate underground station and literally over the road from the hugely successful City Point that Wates City built at the turn of the decade.

The site of the project has only recently been cleared and it was expected to start construction sooner than later in anticipation of the current upturn the property cycle in London is experiencing and the increasing returns that investors willing to gamble a little face.

The attempted sale of the site is the first time that the problems faced by German institutions has hit the London market in a big way and represents more the dire straits that the fund is in than the actual viability of the project which thanks to its prime location would be a hugely desirable spot.

The price placed on the land might sound like a lot of money but the late 90s saw the sale of the Citypoint site from BP to Wates for £143,000,000.

The approved scheme has been designed by Gensler Associates and if built will contain 48,900 square metres of space. This design replaces an earlier 200 metre tall one by Wilkinson Eyre architects that was much praised by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone thanks to the combination of it's sheer height and the 20 degree angle it would have been built at.

With the site still considered by many to be suitable for a taller building and a relatively short and small one approved for the site it represents an opportunity for a brave investor to go for something bigger on one of the most promising spots and better returns if they can stomach the huge price-tag.

As a little post-script, we’ve had some mail asking what a "bulk scraper" is. It's our word for a tower that's to tall to be a groundscraper but is still built out to fill as much space of the site as possible.