25/10/2007
King's Cross, Victoria and Paddington are new hotspots for big business. Everyone used to know who worked where. The journalists were in Fleet Street, the money men in the City, and the property agents in Mayfair.
But not any more. The "business map" of London has changed dramatically in the last two decades and changes still. Nowhere is the change more obvious than at Canary Wharf where the derelict docks of the 1980's have been transformed into a sea of skyscrapers, home to some of the world's largest banks and more than 100,000 workers. The growth of Canary Wharf and the continued strength of the Square Mile has fuelled growth across the capital and many firms now find themselves priced out of their traditional homes or in need of larger modern offices to accommodate expansion.
What were once fringe locations are now key destinations
said Robert Leigh, director of specialist property firm Devono, which exclusively represent tenants looking for offices to rent in London.
It has sparked a wave of new developments across London, which like Canary Wharf have changed the areas where people work in London.
Not so long ago the area around Paddington Station was derelict but is now home to hundreds of flats, shops and offices for tens of thousands of Londoners. Kingfisher, Orange, Monsoon and Visa Europe moved in, but the biggest coup was to get Marks & Spencer to relocate its headquarters from Baker Street in 2004.
There was a similar story south of the river at London Bridge. A former waste land on the fringe of the city, it is now home to law firm Norton Rose and accountants Ernst & Young while Price Waterhouse Coopers also has offices there.
And the area around Victoria Station - once dominated by civil servants and Government offices - is now awash with new media and finance firms. Google moved in while the sparkling Cardinal Place development attracted 3i from Waterloo, Microsoft from north of Oxford Street, P&O from St James's and Wellington Management International from Mayfair.
The key to the success of these of these projects is a renewed focus on quality, not just the quality of the office building itself, but also the quality of life for workers. That means shops, cafes, restaurants, open spaces and good quality transport links. It has worked so far at Victoria, where prime rents are now second only to Mayfair, and Land Securities is planning a £2 billion regeneration of the area to the north of Victoria Station.
Experts are also tipping King's Cross to be a major hotspot in the coming years. Developer Argent is transforming a 67-acre site between King's Cross and St Pancras International and won a major coup this month when supermarket giant Sainsbury agreed to relocate its headquarters there from its lavish office in Holborn in 2011.
Guardian Media Group, home of the Guardian newspaper, is moving to King's Cross next year while the University of Arts London also plans to move its Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design as well as its Chelsea College of Art and Design to the area.
The London College of Fashion and the London College of Communication, on the other hand, look set for a move to Elephant and Castle where developer Lend Lease is overseeing a £1.5 billion regeneration project.
Anthony Duggan, head of research at property agent Drivers Jonas, said:"These colleges give developments exactly the sort of life they need."
It is not just the new developments that have changed where Londoners work, however. A host of surveying firms including CB Richard Ellis, King Sturge and Knight Frank have been forced out of their traditional Mayfair headquarters by the influx of wealthy hedge funds eager for a piece of the action in the world's pre-eminent city.