At least one development project in Croydon town centre has managed to be completed ‘on time and under budget’
Taking shape: Ruskin Square is being pieced together, including homes, offices, Boxpark and an Amazon supermarket
Schroders, the investors behind the Ruskin Square development next to East Croydon Station, have sold their latest office block in a £267.6million property deal with Pension Insurance Corporation.
Reliable, rent-paying tenants, the Home Office, are already lined up to move in next year.
2 Ruskin Square, Schroders said, has been delivered “on time and under budget, despite the challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic”.
Together with developers Stanhope, Schroders have patiently pursued the development of the large site alongside the East Croydon railway tracks for more than a decade.
It now includes a 22-storey residential building which completed seven years ago, they allowed Boxpark to rent part of the site next to the station, and they have also built 1 Ruskin Square, which completed in 2016 and is now home to HM Revenue and Customs.
Planning permission for a third office block was obtained from Croydon Council 12 months ago.
Home Office’s new home: 2 Ruskin Square should be finished later this year
2 Ruskin Square has 344,940sqft of Grade A office space.
In their announcement of the purchase, PIC said that the building will be let to the Government Property Agency, “providing PIC with secure, predictable, long-dated and index-linked cashflows, which are closely aligned to serving PIC’s purpose of paying the pensions of our current and future policyholders”. Which is nice.
The building is due to be completed in June, with the Home Office’s civil servants moving in in August 2024. The building, PIC says, “has been specifically designed for occupation by the Home Office, which will accommodate approximately 3,000 civil servants relocating from historical locations around Croydon”.
This could include Lunar House, which has been the headquarters of the UK Visas and Immigration service for more than 20 years.
“2 Ruskin Square is a best-in-class development,” according to PIC’s James Agar, who said that its use by the Home Office will support “the greening and modernisation of the Government’s estate”.
Clive Anderson, GPA’s director of capital projects, said: “The 2 Ruskin Square, Croydon, development will provide a smaller, better and greener estate which supports the Government’s ambition to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
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At last, a much-needed good news story for Croydon. Well done Stanhope and Schroders. It’s good that this long derelict goods yard site is now redeveloped, with some really attractive buildings and landscape.
ps……Let’s hope that all these Government workers and new residents spend some of their hard-earned money in the Town centre.
Lets hope there are still some places to spend money in Croydon which looks pretty ropy at the moment! The failure of the wesfield plan has hit the town so hard.