Winner expected on £400m US embassy conversion before Christmas

Multiplex and Balfour Beatty will find out before Christmas who has won Qatari Diar’s scheme to turn the former US embassy in London into a luxury hotel.

The pair are the final two left pricing the job at 30 Grosvenor Square which is understood to have a project value of around £400m.

A winner had been due earlier this year but the covid-19 pandemic has delayed the bidding process which saw a pitch from Mace culled earlier on.

Multiplex is working for Qatari Diar at its Chelsea Barracks residential job in west London while the developer is one of several firms involved in the Lewisham Gateway housing scheme, the second phase of which was won by Balfour Beatty last summer.

The work to revamp the Grosvenor Square building has been designed by David Chipperfield Architects and includes 137 guest rooms, five restaurants, six flagship retail units, a spa and a 1,000-person ballroom. The hotel will be operated by Hong Kong-based Rosewood Hotels.

Careys carried out the soft-strip work on the grade II listed building while others working on the scheme include QS Gardiner & Theobald and engineer AKT II. Project manager is Buro Four.

The building was built in 1960 and designed by Eero Saarinen, the acclaimed Finnish-American architect’s only UK project.

The last US embassy staff moved out back in January 2018 into its new building, constructed by Sir Robert McAlpine, at Nine Elms in Vauxhall.