IN Brief:
- Legendre UK, Central & Provincial, and Candour Properties have secured consent for Grove House.
- The Hammersmith scheme includes 171 hotel rooms, affordable office workspace, commercial space, and a 131-seat auditorium.
- Legendre UK is due to act as main contractor, with completion targeted for summer 2028.
Legendre UK, Central & Provincial, and Candour Properties have secured planning consent for the conversion of Grove House in Hammersmith into a mixed-use hotel-led development.
The five-storey building on Hammersmith Grove will be repurposed to provide around 5,500 sq m of hotel space, 250 sq m of affordable office workspace, and approximately 1,000 sq m of ground-floor commercial space. The completed scheme will include 171 hotel rooms, a 131-seat auditorium, and a range of guest and community amenities.
Legendre UK is expected to act as main contractor, with construction planned to begin in the first quarter of 2027. Completion is scheduled for summer 2028.
The wider project team includes GRID Architects, QuinnRoss, FRAME Structural Engineers, Affinity Fire Engineering, RBA Acoustics, Tetra Tech, and Fortis Facades. The development is designed to bring a vacant office building back into active use rather than replacing it with a new structure.
Central and inner London continue to absorb changing demand across office, hotel, leisure, and mixed-use property. Older office stock in well-connected locations is being reviewed for alternative uses where vacancy, energy performance, floorplate suitability, and changing occupier requirements make straightforward refurbishment less attractive.
Office-to-hotel conversion remains technically demanding, especially where existing structural grids, façade conditions, vertical circulation, fire strategies, servicing routes, acoustic separation, and accessibility standards must be adapted to a new operating model. The addition of public-facing commercial space and an auditorium adds further complexity, creating a building that must work for guests, local users, staff, and operators at different times of day.
Retrofit-first schemes can offer environmental and planning advantages, but they also carry risks that are less predictable than new-build delivery. Existing fabric can conceal structural constraints, services limitations, and fire-safety challenges that only become fully visible during strip-out and investigation. Early design coordination is critical when hotel room layouts and back-of-house servicing depend on tight tolerances.
The Hammersmith scheme also reflects pressure on London boroughs to bring underused buildings back into productive use while maintaining active frontages and employment floorspace. Mixed-use redevelopment allows owners to respond to shifting market demand without surrendering the whole building to a single purpose.
Legendre’s role as both development partner and main contractor gives the project an integrated route from planning into delivery. That alignment should help manage buildability decisions before site work begins, especially where cost control, sustainability targets, and programme certainty will be tested by the practical realities of converting an existing urban building.
