Premier Inn snaps up St Mary At Hill site as City expansion continues
The turnkey deal with Beltane Asset Management will see an office in St Mary at Hill taken under a 35-year lease by Premier Inn, which will invest more than £25m into converting the building into a hotel and Thyme restaurant.
Derek Griffin, head of acquisitions for Premier Inn in Greater London, said: “In addition to securing such a prime site as St Mary at Hill for our portfolio, we’ve recently had notable successes at Goodman’s Fields (a 250-bedroom hotel scheme with Berkeley Homes) and at Euston Road (a 266-bedroom hotel).
“The results show how flexible we can be and what we have to offer development and investment partners like Beltane. We’re literally having a purple patch on delivering growth in London and are eager for more.”
Significant investor
Jonathan Chenery, partner at Beltane Asset Management, revealed that the deal could be the ‘first of many’ with Premier Inn.
He added: “We have developed a strong relationship with Whitbread and are confident that this will be the first of many transactions we will be able to do together. With six assets in London, we remain highly acquisitive and have significant investor support for further purchases this year.”
Meanwhile, Bruntwood, the family-owned commercial property company with offices in the North and Midlands, has today completed the conversion of Hepworth Point - a 45,000 sq.ft, 10-storey office building in Leeds city centre – into a 131-bedroom Premier Inn. The hotel will open in April and will create approximately 40 new jobs in Leeds.
In the pipeline
Premier Inn currently has more than 47,000 bedrooms across the UK and over 10,000 bedrooms in its secured development pipeline. BigHospitality recently reported that the Whitbread-owned hotel operator secured eight new sites across the UK in just one week, contributing to 750 rooms in that pipeline.
Whitbread also recently announced its latest Trading Update to the City, revealing it is creating 10,000 new jobs in the UK over the next three years as a result of the expansion of the Costa Coffee and Premier Inn brands.
