Crown Estate puts £322m St James's Market second phase out to tender

The Crown Estate has opened the race for a £322m West End prize: the second phase of its St James's Market development in London. Contractors will compete for a £222m main works package, with a further £100m on the table for an optional overhaul of the neighbouring 130 Jermyn Street.

The scheme wraps 312,500 sq ft of new offices around and above the Grade II-listed Carlton Cinema on Haymarket. Make Architects designed the eight-storey block, which combines offices with shops and restaurants and sits on two basement levels holding plant, cycle parking and other facilities.

Balfour Beatty built the first phase of St James's Market, completed in 2017. For this phase, up to four firms will be shortlisted.

What does the engineering demand?

The design requires heavyweight structure to unlock space above the historic cinema. Storey-deep steel trusses will span nearly 30m over the retained building. The Charles II Street façade will be reused and adapted to modern floor heights.

The plot compounds the difficulty. Bounded by Haymarket, Charles II Street, St Alban's Street and Norris Street, the tight urban site forces delivery teams to contend with London Underground, Thames Water assets and the planned Crossrail 2 route.

The package includes:

• Shell and core refurbishment of the Carlton Cinema
• New substations
• Public realm works
• A separate demolition contract, taken on by the winning builder through novation

Who sits on the team?

Gardiner & Theobald acts as project manager and cost consultant. AKT II is structural engineer. Watkins Payne handles building services and sustainability. BIM Technologies serves as project information manager, with Hyland Edgar Driver as landscape architect.

The offices target BREEAM Outstanding and the retail space BREEAM Excellent, alongside a WELL Gold rating. Air source heat pumps form part of the energy strategy.

What is the timeline?

The contract starts in June 2027 and runs to January 2031. Firms have until 19 November to submit requests to participate through the Crown Estate's supplier portal.

For contractors weighing a bid, the novated demolition contract and the truss engineering set this apart from a standard West End office job. The shortlist of four means the odds, and the mobilisation costs, favour firms already tooled up for heritage-adjacent city-centre work.