On behalf of client ED Group, award-winning London developer and asset manager LBS Properties has completed a circa £70M refinancing with BentallGreenOak for three significant office projects in London. The investment debt package supersedes previous development funding from Cheyne Capital.

The three projects include 70 White Lion Street, a new 36,000 sq. ft. office scheme in Angel, N1 which was 100% pre-let to Spaces (part of IWG) and completed in July 2019.  

And in nearby Old Street, LBS Properties has recently launched Chapter House - one of two buildings being developed adjacent to Old Street Roundabout, designed by the renowned Buckley Grey Yeoman architects and collectively known as ‘Chapter and Verse.’ Chapter House, a converted former Victorian school building completed in May 2019, provides c.34,000 sq. ft. of new office space and is currently 80% let to Ebiquity and TotallyMoney, while the adjoining new-build Verse building will provide circa 16,000 sq. ft. of space and is due to complete in September.

The deal marks ED Group and LBS Properties’ third funding deal with BentallGreenOak, following its acquisition of the old Mecca Bingo Hall on Hackney Road – now a residential scheme known as HKR Hoxton - and the £32m Defoe Court office acquisition last year.

Nick Crawford, Managing Director of LBS Properties, comments: “We are delighted to have completed another financing with BentallGreenOak. Over the last two years we have developed three high-quality office buildings in excellent, City Fringe locations, with White Lion Street and Chapter House close to fully let shortly after completion, and Verse Building due to deliver 16,000 square feet to the Old Street market in September this year.  This financing will support the transition from development through to stabilisation, and facilitate ED Group’s strategy to hold these assets, in light of the continued shortage of high-quality office space in these submarkets.”

Martin Sheridan, UK Debt Principal at BentallGreenOak, comments: “BentallGreenOak is pleased to have supported LBS Properties on yet another successful Central London office project. This transaction further underlines our ability to provide our borrower’s with wide-ranging and large-scale financing solutions across the capital structure for stabilised, value add and development assets.”

HFF advised the borrowers.