Lunar House: Home Office staff are still be moved across Croydon to Ruskin Square
Singaporean investor Ho Bee Land bought government office blocks Apollo House and Lunar House for £99million in 2015. And now that Home Office staff are moving into 21st Century offices in Ruskin Square, Ho Bee Land has come forward with its conversion plans.
Ho Bee Land has submitted initial plans to the council’s planning department to refurbish and convert the office blocks into flats – 420 at Lunar House and 208 at Apollo House, both on Wellesley Road.
Apollo House: opened as offices in 1970, it will soon be converted into 208 flats
That’s all in addition to whatever other developers are coming up with along that stretch of six-lane urban motorway, or whatever number of flats Westfield eventually decide upon as part of their latest version of plans for the Whitgift Centre, on the other side of Wellesley Road.
Ho Bee Land are expected to put forward a full planning application next year.
This latest office-to-residential conversion comes just a few weeks after Inside Croydon broke the news that the owners of No1 Croydon, by East Croydon Station, was also to be coverted office-to-resi, cramming 250 microflats into that building’s 24 floors.
Lunar House (20 storeys tall) and Apollo House (22 storeys) were developed by property speculator Harry Hyams and opened in 1970, their names inspired by the 1969 NASA moon landings. They comprise a total of 441,797 sq ft of office space.
Luxury flats: the Singaporean developers have already converted this landmark building on Albert Embankment
“This acquisition is unique as it offers us recurrent income till 2023,” Chua Thian Poh, the chairman of Ho Bee Land, said on buying the properties nine years ago. “In the interim, it allows us ample time to plan and maximise the development potential of the site.”
Ho Bee Land bought about £600million-worth of property in Britain in a purchasing spree a decade ago.
That included offices at No1 Albert Embankment, on the south side of Lambeth Bridge, which they have already converted to 183 apartments and seven penthouses, called (inevitably) Parliament View, “the perfect place to enjoy the culture and style that is emblematic of London city living”, apparently.
They may struggle to get the same kind of high-end returns on their Croydon properties.
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