London & Continental Railways (LCR) is to sign a 50:50 joint venture agreement with Lend Lease for a 130-acre office-led development at the Olympics site in
The Olympic Delivery Authority and LCR have accepted terms that will see long-term preferred development partner Lend Lease finally take an equity stake in the £2bn project.
Within the next two weeks, Lend Lease will be officially appointed as joint venture partner on the project, which involves the construction of as much as 6m sq ft of commercial comprising principally offices, alongside shops and leisure. The project will include some residential.
The scheme will stretch across zones two to seven (which LCR refers to as Stage 2) of the
In a statement LCR said: “London & Continental Railways today announced its intention to enter into a binding Framework Agreement with Lend Lease as its development /investment partner for Stage 2 of the
“The Agreement will provide for the establishment of a 50/50 joint venture company between LCR and Lend Lease. Lend Lease will also be appointed as development manager of the Stage 2 site.”
LCR selected Lend Lease as preferred development partner for the entire site, including the first phase in 2007.
But the developer’s offer of a £375m financing package to take an equity stake in this first phase – the 2,800-home athletes village – was rejected by the government as “not in the best interests of the taxpayer”.
As a result Lend Lease was engaged instead as project manager for this part of the scheme.
For further comment on this story, see Paul Norman’s Olympics blog
paul.norman@estatesgazette.com
