Work starts on Walkie Talkie

Land Securities and Canary Wharf have begun the construction of 20 Fenchurch Street, EC3, known as the ‘Walkie Talkie’, after the breaking of ground by Canary Wharf’s chief executive, George Iacobescu, and Robert Noel, managing director of Land Securities’ London Portfolio.

Completion of the Rafael Vinoly-designed building is envisaged in early 2014.
The 37-storey, 690,000 sq ft building, will provide what the joint-venture partners say will be world-class office space.

News of the commencement of construction came the day before LandSec reported its third-quarter interim management statement in which it said it expected to be able to start work on Atlas Site, Buchanan Street, Glasgow, during 2011 thanks to high levels of interest from retailers in pre-lets.

Property acquisitions in the quarter totalled £159.4m at an average yield of 6.8 percent. Cumulative property acquisitions in the nine months to the end of December 2010 reached £331m at an average yield of 6.3 percent.

Total property sales in the quarter totalled £59.8m at 1.2 percent below the March 2010 valuation, at an average yield of 1.9 percent. Cumulative property sales in the nine months to the end of December totalled £517.1m at 4.2 percent above March 2010 valuation, at an average yield of 2.8 percent.