Designs for Mayfair’s old Fenwick store look set for green light

By Adrian Zorzut, Local Democracy Reporter

Approval is being recommended for a ‘jacked up’ office block with a roof garden above an abandoned Fenwick department store.

Westminster City council will be urged to approve the scheme for the site in Mayfair, with conditions, at a meeting on April 2, council documents have revealed.

The proposal, by Lazari Investments Limited, seeks to partially demolish the New Bond Street and Brook Street store and have it heightened or ‘jacked up’ with new floor slabs and facades to create new office and retail space.

The bottom two levels will be developed into ‘high quality’ retail space while the second to ninth floors will be dedicated office space with a lavish roof garden above it. There will also be external terraces replete with greenery from the fourth to ninth floors.

Lazari Investments aims to keep 75 per cent of the existing historic facades in place. Council documents show Westminster City is recommended to grant conditional permission requiring Lazari to stump up more than £400,000 in financial contributions and other building costs.

Because of its size, the proposal will also need the approval of the Mayor of London, whose office initially expressed concerns about the height and design of the building. Historic England objected to the application saying the site might be home to prehistoric and Civil War archaeology.

The proposal would see a 7,600sqm reduction in retail space which is being driven by what a council report says is the ‘need to reconfigure the site to its optimal layout for office use’.

In the report, council officers wrote: “The proposal will provide an appropriate combination of modern retail and office accommodation that accords with the relevant London Plan and City Plan policies and is therefore considered to be acceptable.”

The site consists of Victorian buildings which were recently owned and occupied by the Fenwick department store, which began trading from its New Bond Street store in 1891.

Fenwick received planning permission in 2020 for a similar significant extension to the property but changes in the retail sector, compounded by Covid, meant the store was unable to continue operating at the site and sold it on to Lazari Investments Limited in late 2022.

Pictured top: A CGI of the proposed new office at the site of the former Fenwick store in Mayfair (Picture: Westminster City/Foster and Partners)