Chair and Journalist:
Paul Norman – Editor CoStar News
Attendees:
Richard Bourne – Chief Executive, Martin’s Properties
Sarah Slater – Chief Executive, Eyre Estate
Steven Medway – Chief Executive, Kings Road Partnership and Knightsbridge BID
Sarah McLaren – Customer Partnership Manager Hospitality & Culture, Crown Estate
Tim Butler – Managing Director, South Kensington Estates
Hannah Grievson – Property Director, Sloane Stanley
Harriett Renny – Leasing Director, Battersea Power Station
Martin’s Properties’ latest round table was chaired by CoStar’s Paul Norman and brought together custodians of some of London’s Leading Estates. The panel discussed long term strategies for some of London’s oldest estates including The Crown Estate, Eyre Estates, South Kensington Estates, Sloane Stanley and Martin’s Properties as well as London’s newest in the form of Battersea Power Station and the King’s Road Partnership. Topics included the long-term strategies to protect London’s Leading Estates and ensure their post pandemic revival, planning challenges and how these leading estates are paving the way for London’s ESG agenda.
The Crown Estate, one of London’s largest estates covering the West End and St James’s, has seen large changes both internally and externally in recent years undergoing structural changes whilst identifying exciting opportunities ahead as we come out of the pandemic. Sarah McLaren holds the newly created role of Customer Partnership Manager for Hospitality and Culture. McLaren points out that there has been a shift in balance for The Crown Estate, “we are evolving our vision to create new districts that foster vibrant and diverse environments that can remain resilient and relevant. The shift from retail consumption has been towards customer experience and a lifestyle mindset. A greater emphasis on expanding and broadening our hospitality and culture offer is a key part of this journey.” This shift has been evidenced across much of the portfolio. Despite such a large and prodigious estate, Sarah believes that the key to their future success will be to remain agile and for continued collaboration with partners of a similar mindset who align with The Crown Estate’s sustainability values.
Hannah Grievson, Sloane Stanley’s Property Director, feels that their estate, which comprises an even split of commercial & residential properties on the western parts of the King’s Road and Fulham Road, benefited from measures that were put in place ahead of the pandemic. Grievson cites the success of Sloane Stanley in recent years to the support to which they gave their customers throughout the pandemic and the changes that were made to the structure of their commercial leases. “We were one of the forerunners of the ‘pop-up’. These kept the area busy and alive through the pandemic. We have always tried to adapt to what the customer requires. By encouraging people to take shorter leases we have been able to bring new exciting brands to the area for the benefit of our locale and community.” Hannah’s pop-up tenants are very engaged and provide a lot of research on which Sloane Stanley use to shape their strategy. “Recent feedback from our Pop Ups shows us that tourists are back, which was not something we saw pre pandemic in this area.” Over the same period Sloane Stanley has seen their HMO residential portfolio thrive and now have waiting lists for their properties. Through working hand in hand with their commercial clients, Sloane Stanley can maintain and serve the established community.
For Tim Butler, Managing Director of South Kensington Estates, the question of protecting the estate which he presides over, spanning parts of South Kensington and Knightsbridge, has wider ramifications. Butler views part of his work as protecting the perception of London’s Estates to ensure they are seen as a power for good rather than a political target. “We need to show the value we bring to society through our critical mass that smaller land ownership can’t deliver such as placemaking.” With a focus on the bricks and mortar of his portfolio, Butler questioned what the future of property management will be for retail and restaurants versus what has historically been just selling spaces. Like Grievson, Butler sees the value in shorter leases and adds the consideration of exclusion of service charge to his leases to attract new customers. “Our strategy really focuses on what our customers want and working with them so that they can grow as a business through our estate.”
Moving North to St John’s Wood, the Eyre Estate, one of London’s oldest Estates, the creator of the first garden suburb, and once owners of Lords Cricket Ground, has faced challenges through a loss of scale due to leasehold reforms and death taxes. Sarah Slater sees her role as Chief Executive as one of stewardship to protect the heritage of the primary residential portfolio and ensure that the heritage properties are still relevant to the way of living today and for future generations. From a residential perspective the Eyre Estate has benefitted from extending their leases and now offering a new norm of 2-3 + year leases. A challenge for Slater is the pepper-potted nature of the portfolio. This has been overcome through working collaboratively with key local stakeholders, “working with local partners we have tried to stitch together an ecosystem to create a fantastic environment and place for people to live.”
Heading South to Chelsea, panel host Richard Bourne, Chief Executive of Martin’s Properties oversees a portfolio whose Chelsea roots go back over 75 years. Much of Bourne’s work has been to diversify the retail heavy Chelsea portfolio whilst simultaneously holding a key role as one of the founding partners of the King’s Road Partnership. The partnership looks to collaborate with the major landlords in the area to look at the bigger picture and work together to create a destination fitting of its history, that feels exciting, whilst safe & clean with public realm that encourages locals and visitors alike to dwell in its spaces. The King’s Road fared better than its London counterparts during the pandemic and bounced back sooner. Bourne accredits this to the affluent local resident base who remained loyal throughout coupled with the strong collaborative relationship between property owners and customers. This was felt most keenly through the restaurant businesses which swiftly adapted to a takeaway offering and alfresco dining. On a micro level, Martin’s Properties are focused on attracting exciting new brands to the area interspersed with restaurants and cultural pieces. “We want to be Avant Guard and at the forefront of High Street experience” Bourne comments. Working closely with Martin’s Properties, Steve Medway CEO of the King’s Road Partnership and Knightsbridge BID began work repositioning the King’s Road 5 years ago. The £1m investment into rebranding and raising the profile of the King’s Road is paying dividends with lots of interest from new brands and businesses creating flagship stores in the area. Medway simultaneously oversees the Knightsbridge partnership which has faced many challenges over recent years, predominantly due to the lack of international shoppers. Across both roles Steve’s mission is to “pull together stakeholders to create one vision to make an area as best as it can be.”
Self proclaimed “new kid on the block’ Harriett Renny, Leasing Director at Battersea Power Station has been faced with a dichotomy of challenge and opportunity with one of London’s most iconic new developments. “We have tried to create an ecosystem of residential, commercial and retail that anyone can come and enjoy.” Harriet attributes much of the recent success, (over 5 million visitors since opening in October 22), down to the independent community that was created 6 years ago. Like many of the panellists, Harriett cites changes in traditional lease structures alongside white boxing units to the success of attracting independent retailers. Faced with literally filling the space during the pandemic, with various tenants signing up during this time, Battersea Power Station were fortunate with their post pandemic opening time on the wave of the recovery and a unique location South of the River where many of the larger global brands had no representation. To further support customers locating there, Battersea Power Station shared the risk through lease deals to ensure the right mix of tenants. The future strategic vision of Battersea Power Station will come to life through the curation of the right tenant mix “we will continue to look at attracting big and small brands” says Renny whilst positioning the actual building as a tourist attraction in its own right, “whilst of course we want people to come and spend here, we want the chimney lift (Lift 109) and the outside spaces to attract people to come down and enjoy the destination.” At the heart of it was a central community offer. The larger attractions came later.
This sense of curation was echoed across the board but with a local spin for Slater, who views the creation of public realm as vital to ensure people keep “spilling out onto the High Street”. For Slater and Grievson alike it is the understanding of your community that is the key to the curation of their portfolios. McClaren uses data and insight to help form the curation of The Crown Estates portfolio, with an offering that is ‘globally distinct whilst locally relevant.’ For Bourne the importance of understanding the right mix for the King’s Road is vital alongside understanding the business models of customers to ensure success for all. Bourne notes that for many younger consumers provenance really matters, so they work to create a mix of occupiers with shared ESG values that meet the requirements of a wide generational mix of consumer.
Sitting astride two very different areas The South Kensington Estate has used this to create two different destinations. The proximity to the tube and London’s finest museums brings hordes of tourists to Exhibition Road which Butler and his team look to cater for through a diverse mix of F&B retailers. Further East on the Brompton Road, one of London’s first Design Districts was created. The concept of the design district was to group design retail businesses together to help each other. They are now seeing the fruits of their labours, “we have now reached critical mass where brands are wanting to be here.”
Whilst not curating a portfolio the value attributed to the work that the King’s Road BID and many of London’s BIDs are doing to curate the space in-between the buildings was deemed of utmost importance as landlords look to attract and retain footfall to the area.
Much of the preservation of the heritage and curation of these destinations requires working with councils to change planning and engaging with local communities Medway’s task in Knightsbridge and the King’s Road was to engage with the community to identify “what they need and would like to see and engaging with the local community to work through perceived challenges together.” Bourne echoed these comments and noted that planning changes can quickly become politically charged and emphasised the need to listen to everyone – balancing the needs of residents, businesses and consumers. “Businesses need a local loyal catchment and residents want a vibrant daytime and evening economy where they can buy their commodities and enjoy dining and cultural experience.” McClaren identified the recent changes to class E as positive but acknowledged that these were the tip of the iceberg when it comes to implementing these changes. Slater and Butler identified agility of decision making and lack of planning resources as a challenge to their residential portfolios.
Looking ahead at how these Leading London Estates can continue to pave the way our focus turned to ESG. For Butler he feels that ESG is imperative in the strategy across London’s Leading Estates, “there is a sense of duty for London Estates; we are stewards of enormous quantities of body carbon and that we need to deal with this responsibly.” Grievson and Slater both share the vision that their roles as custodians is to preserve the heritage of their portfolios through refurbishing and retrofitting the existing with a huge focus on the efficiencies of these properties. From a social perspective Slater noted that looking at the social piece it is important that there is a “mixture of types and tenures to ensure that communities work together cohesively.” McClaren identified a number of examples in how The Crown Estate has worked successfully with partners to address the ESG agenda, “We have reviewed our development pipeline to consider further sustainability improvements in the design, construction and operation of our projects. We are working with customers such as Fallow who align with our sustainability priorities and – from a public realm point of view – we have successfully worked with Westminster and TFL to plant trees and reduce the number of traffic lanes on Regent Street from four to two. From a social perspective, we are supporting our customers and communities with a series of job fairs and are developing new creative partnerships with the likes of BAFTA, which has collectively allowed us to pilot new ways of working, delivered new jobs and helped to remove barriers of entry.” At Battersea Power Station there is a huge commitment from the shareholders into ESG which has been evidenced on the ground by the formation of the community’s team, the underground power station to power The Power Station through to BASE (Battersea Academy of Skills and Employment). Medway has partnered with a similar scheme Westminster Works which has already created employment for over 100 since its conception.
For Bourne who reports to a multigenerational board for whom ESG is a top priority he has created a framework that encompasses ESG into everything they do. “For the environment we look to tackle the climate emergency by only working with green energy suppliers. We have implemented green lease clauses into our leases and have put into place a sustainable procurement procedure. On the social side we look to protect our culture and community and see being part of the King’s Road Partnership as key to this success. We place enormous value on the health and wellbeing of all staff and customers and have implemented programmes which address first aid and mental health.”
See here for the CoStar article.
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