Asset and capital management companies Frogmore and C1 Capital gained permission on Oct. 19 from the planning committee of London’s Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea to more than double the hotel room count at the existing 404-room Hilton London Olympia.
The plans will create a property with an asset value of almost half a billion pounds sterling.
Having owned the land on which the hotel sits since April 2022 — along with the hotel itself — the joint venture has proposed a new development with a total key count of 905 rooms, according to a news release from C1. The company added the “development will be the largest hotel to be built in London in a decade.”
The two entities, who are now looking “for an additional partner to develop and, ultimately, own the resulting investment,” acquired the asset for £130 million ($158 million) from Malaysian businessman Ong Beng Seng’s firm House Properties.
The project is close to another major development project in the area, the £1.3 billion ($158 million) overhaul of the city’s Grade II-listed Olympia Exhibition Centre that first opened in 1886.
That development project has been a particularly complex scheme due to the former ownership of facilities and land having included stakes with several London boroughs and transportation holding companies.
The plans for the new hotel, due to open in 2027, include retaining part of the existing Hilton London Olympia and regenerating an area of land of almost one acre next to the exhibition center and its London Underground rail station.
The property closed at the onset of the COVID-19 but reopened when the partnership stepped in.
The expanded hotel — designed by Elliott Wood, with architecture by Studio Moren and planning advisory by DP9 — will feature a rooftop garden and bar.
Jo Allen, CEO of Frogmore, said her firm has “since the Hilton London Olympia hotel re-opened in 2022 … been delighted by trading figures, which have outperformed our expectations.”
“With the Olympia London Conference Centre … reopening in 2025, we envisage enormous customer demand for the new hotel. The existing London Hilton Olympia has had average occupancy levels in excess of 80% in 2023,” said Gerard Nolan, chairman of C1 Capital.
He added the completed hotel is expected to have a “gross development value of circa £450 million ($546 million).”
(Corrected on Oct. 23 to remove a paragraph specifying the Hilton London Olympia was currently closed, which it is not. Also corrected a link between the redevelopment project of the hotel and the Olympia Exhibition Centre in the fifth paragraph.)