NAMA appoints Allsop as receiver to €225m property in London’s West End

Britain’s Property Week today reports that NAMA has appointed property receivers to a major property in London’s Leicester Square. The property is the present site of the Odeon cinema and the adjoining Leicester Square Theatre which occupies a substantial part of the south western corner of Leicester Square. The site is owned by Steamboat Developments Limited, the Irish company to which NAMA appointed Kieran Wallace of KPMG as receiver on 25th March, 2011. Steamboat is most associated with rugby legend, Pat Whelan, his business partner Pat Chesser and solicitor Paul Hanby.

The site was assembled at a reported cost of GBP £58m and Property Week estimates that it might be worth GBP 200m (€225m) in its developed state. According to Property Week the site has planning permission for the development of a 245-bedroom hotel, 33 flats, four restaurants and a two-screen cinema. The planning application does not appear to be available online from Westminster City Council but an application in respect of an Environment Impact Study is available here.

The property receivers appointed are our new friends, Allsop, who ran a spectacularly successful auction inDublin’s Shelbourne Hotel two weeks ago. In the British context, Allsop are termed fixed-charge property receivers and the two gentlemen at Allsop handling the property are Jon Gershinson and Simon Davidson.

There is a little sting in the tail of this story. Property Week say that another company called Real Estate Resolutions bought part of the site in November 2010 and that the redevelopment cannot take place without the input of that company. Curiously Real Estate Resolutions which was founded by former Ballymore planning director, Tim Farrow, does not list the Leicester Square site as one of its developments on its website. Ballymore is Sean Mulryan’s company and the last I heard of Tim Farrow in connection with Ballymore was that he was suing the company for €4.5m after his dismissal.

UPDATE: 30th January, 2012. The property in Leicester Square has reportedly been sold to the Edwardian hotel group, no price has yet been disclosed. There is a press release by the NAMA receiver, Allsop, here. The Financial Times is reporting the site sold for “what is thought to be close to £100m”, which if confirmed,  would be considerably more than the GBP 58m thought to have been the cost of Steamboat assembling the site. The site is presently undeveloped and it has been estimated it might be worth GBP 200m in its developed state.