International: Sustainability Goes Mainstream in London

By Liviu Oltean, Associate Editor

FORE Partnership, a real estate investment club for family offices and private investors, and Sandy, Bedfordshire-based developer Kier Property have announced the sale of a sustainable, work-in-progress office project located by the River Thames in central London.

Dubbed VIEW 58, the class A office building is located at 58 Victoria Embankment and was acquired by a charity with the moniker of Nesta for almost $79 million.
Designed by TP Bennett, the 48,000-square-foot office building is rising on the site previously occupied by the HM Courts and Tribunals Service. The new building incorporates technologies that are new to the U.K., such as solar photovoltaic panels that generate power from both the top and the underside of the panels. In addition, almost 99 percent of the demolition waste was diverted from landfills and recycled since.

Geoff Mulgan, CEO of Nesta, declared that the company’s acquisition was motivated by the building’s fully-integrated vision on sustainability. Nesta plans to relocate its headquarters when the building is topped out in September 2016.

“A key part of our ‘responsible real estate’ philosophy is to bring sustainability mainstream, to use it as a tool to unlock value just like any other management strategy and to widen the view of ‘green’ beyond the traditional narrow focus on energy, water and waste,” Basil Demeroutis, managing partner of FORE, said in a prepared statement.