Ministry building is being transformed into VIP home for senior city slickers

 
Rex Features

Central London’s first high-price “baby boomer” retirement home is to be built in Victoria with one-bedroom flats starting from about £1.2 million.

Between 40 and 50 apartments will be on sale at the development on Horseferry Road in response to the growing trend for inner city life among the active “seniors” personified by 67-year-old actress Dame Helen Mirren.

The apartments will be exclusively for the over-55s and are likely to have on-site health care. There will also be 24-hour security and leisure facilities including a swimming pool and a gym.

The £60 million scheme is aimed mainly at wealthy ex-pats or “silver foxes” with a home in the country who want to keep a bolt-hole in the centre of London. It will be run by the retirement home specialists Pegasus, who currently have only one other scheme in London — at Acton — but plan to develop several more in Zone One.

Bruno Jaczkowski, residential development director at consultants Jones Lang LaSalle, which advised Pegasus, said: “This scheme will be very much in the vanguard of senior living and is in response to the ageing demographic and the growing wealth of people over 55. Even if you have got a house in the country you may well be tempted by one of these. If you go to the theatre in the West End it will be just a taxi ride back.”

The flats will be bigger than usual in a scheme of this kind, starting at around 800 sq ft for a one-bedroom apartment. They will be priced at around £1,500 per sq ft.

The area was chosen because it is relatively tranquil for central London but is also changing from a mainly office district into a more residential quarter.

It is close to the green open space of Vincent Square and the headquarters of the Royal Horticultural Society.

Tom Morgan, a senior director from the CBRE property advisory firm, told Estates Gazette magazine: “This scheme will provide something that is largely missing in the central London market. Such high-quality schemes are normally only found in rural areas.”

The building, Grenadier House, is currently used by the Ministry of Justice and has been government offices since it was constructed in 1989.

It is being sold by the wealthy Saudi Jameel family who bought the six-floor building from the British Coal Pension Scheme for £24.7 million in 2002.

The lease expires in 2015 and the development is expected to be completed by about 2017.

Pegasus paid just over £25 million for the property.

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