Abu Dhabi Royals Win Green Light for London West End Office

A Middle East power player is set to drop one of the biggest office developments London’s West End has seen in decades.

Westminster City Council signed off this week on Berkeley Estate Asset Management’s plan to remake the former flagship BHS store and the neighboring London College of Fashion site into a massive office-and-retail complex, Bloomberg reported.

The proposal for 33 Cavendish Square, designed by KPF, clocks in at roughly 800,000 square feet of offices atop more than 100,000 square feet of shops, a scale usually reserved for the City of London, not the West End.

The developer is tied to the Private Department of the President of the United Arab Emirates, ultimately overseen by Abu Dhabi’s Al Nahyan family. The group has spent decades assembling a prime London portfolio, featuring trophy holdings around Berkeley Square and a more recent push deeper into the West End.

The Cavendish Square project would rank among their most ambitious yet and stands out in a district dominated by smaller protected historic stock.

The size comparison is telling: 33 Cavendish Square’s office count nearly matches Goldman Sachs’ UK headquarters, underscoring just how rare a build this is for the neighborhood.

The Abu Dhabi royal family isn’t the only group plotting office developments in London.

JPMorgan Chase is considering building London’s largest office building, spanning more than 2 million square feet, at its Riverside South site in Canary Wharf, designed by Foster + Partners. The riverside parcel could also deliver the longest frontage on the Thames and uninterrupted views of London’s skyline.

Meanwhile, Blackstone is considering selling its Cargo office building at 25 North Colonnade in Canary Wharf early next year, having previously attempted a sale two years ago. A sale of Cargo would be the first significant transaction of an income-producing office building in Canary Wharf since 2021.

— Holden Walter-Warner