A long road to success

1 Birkenhead Street, London WC1H 8BA

When asked by an overseas building owner in 2014 to provide advice on finding a viable alternative use for its failing boutique hotel in King’s Cross, neither they nor we assumed that it would take until 2022 to finally being able to draw a line in the sand and state that a successful outcome had been reached.

Rough Luxe Hotel in Birkenhead Street was simply too small to turn a profit and after consultations with the owners, we agreed that conversion of this Grade II listed building to an office was the correct approach for their long term management strategy.

Taking an asset manager role, Ashurst Real Estate assembled a full project team of planners, heritage advisers, architects and project managers and drove the change of use proposal through several incremental planning applications before arriving at a 2019 planning permission that was ready to start on site.

In the meantime, a low key marketing campaign began with heads of terms for a pre-let to A Room in Town, a serviced consulting room provider, being agreed by the end of 2017.

Complex legal documents, massive building contracts and of course COVID ensured that the construction works failed to start until mid 2021 with A Room in Town waiting patiently in the wings.

September 2022 was monumental with the building works finally completing and the keys handed to a Room in Town.

The long road to success was walked with many unforeseen obstacles overcome along the way and all parties to the transaction needed to demonstrate incredible resilience to see this project from proposal to finality.

This has been the longest transaction that either a Room in Town and Ashurst Real Estate have worked on, being almost 5 years from agreeing heads of terms to handing over the keys.

Strong personal relationships were key factors to keeping this non linear transaction on track and reaching a somewhat delayed but no less successful outcome for all concerned.

Ashurst Real Estate acted for the landlord whilst A Room in Town represented themselves.