Bovis coup as firm pips Mace to £200m Bloomsbury tower

Bovis has picked up its second major job in recent weeks with the firm understood to have won a £200m scheme to build a new office tower near the British Museum in London.

BC Group’s 19-storey One Museum Street scheme was approved by Camden council in 2023 but faced a series of legal challenges which ended last September when the High Court refused an attempt by campaigners to bring a full judicial review against the decision to approve it.

The plans, set for a mostly mid-rise area of Bloomsbury, also received more than 500 letters of objection from locals including film-maker Mike Leigh and Victorian Society president Griff Rhys Jones.

Designed by DSDHA, the scheme will replace the 1960s Selkirk House, a 17-storey former Travelodge hotel, with 44 homes and 22,650sq m of office space. It would also include three six-storey buildings and one five-storey block containing housing and retail space.

Bovis beat remaining rival Mace, which this week won the £200m Edge Shoreditch office scheme in the City, for the job which is set to get going next year.

Others working on the scheme include development manager Simten, project manager Gardiner & Theobald, QS T&T Alinea and structural engineer Heyne Tillett Steel.

The approved scheme is the third incarnation of the proposals, following earlier plans by DSDHA for a 21-storey tower on the site which were revised.

The job is the next major scheme Bovis has won after US private equity firm Atlas Holdings bought the contractor earlier this year from its Australian owner Lendlease.

Last month, Bovis, which along with Multiplex is still waiting to find out who has won a huge deal to build a £600m office block at 18 Blackfriars for Hines, won the £330m 60 Gracechurch Street tower scheme in the City for Sellar. Keltbray is set to start demolition work at the site at the beginning of next year.