Shard developer hoping work, which has been criticised by heritage groups, can be completed by end of decade
Plans to redevelop Liverpool Street station under proposals drawn up by Herzog & de Meuron are set to go in to City planners by March next year.
Shard developer Sellar is working with Network Rail on the job which will involve creating around one million sq ft of mixed-use space at the site as well as revamping the capital’s busiest station which has 135 million passengers using it annually.
Around £450m will be spent on upgrading the station which will see concourse space doubled, an increase in the number of lifts, escalators and ticket barriers as well as new public realm and green spaces.
The job, which has around 840,000 sq ft of office space, is expected to be parcelled up into around £200m worth of civils work ahead of the main design and build contract starting, which has a price tag of around £600m.
Included in this package is the refurbishment of the existing Andaz hotel which will be relocated to a five-storey block on top of a 10-storey office below and cover around 190,000 sq ft.
Work to fit out the 250-bed hotel is expected to cost £100m and will be included in the main design and build package which will be let as a two-stage job.
The current grade II listed Victorian hotel, previously known as the Great Eastern, will be turned into commercial space.
The entire scheme will measure 108.5m from top to bottom, considerably smaller than some of its neighbours including the 278m tall 22 Bishopsgate and the proposed 55 Bishopsgate tower which will be 269m tall.
Under Sellar’s timetable, plans for the £1.5bn makeover will go in to the City by March next year with work set to start in the second half of the following year with the job being completed in 2029.
The scheme has attracted criticism from heritage groups who are worried parts of the grade II listed station will be lost forever.
But at a public consultation on the plans Sellar development director Barry Ostle said the Victorian railsheds would be staying as would the majority of sheds built in the 1990s along with the revamped Great Eastern hotel.
Building understands that prominent critics, the Victorian Society and Save Britain’s Heritage, have both received private viewings of the proposals in the past couple of weeks, while Historic England chief executive Duncan Wilson, who has also criticised the scheme, was in attendance at the consultation yesterday.
Mace, which was behind Sellar’s Shard scheme and its current Paddington Square development due to finished by the middle of next year, is currently providing pre-construction advice.
But Sellar chief executive James Sellar told Building the job would go out to tender and said as well as Mace the firm was planning on speaking to Tier 1 contractors such as Sir Robert McAlpine, Multiplex, Laing O’Rourke, Skanska and Lendlease about the work in the coming months.
It has already been getting pre-construction advice from Erith about the groundworks and substructure work but this job will go out to tender as well.
Sellar has formed a joint venture with MTR, the Hong Kong firm which runs the Elizabeth line, for the work called Mersey 1 Ltd.
Sellar is hoping the scheme, which is due to have a second consultation next January, will do for Liverpool Street what the makeover for St Pancras has done for that station and part of north London.
Others working on the Liverpool Street deal, known as Project Mersey, include cost consultant and project manager G&T, engineer WSP and landscape firm Townshend.
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