Crossrail is coming. With its opening only 500 days away, the capital’s property community is gearing up.
The Elizabeth Line - or the ‘purple one’, as tourists will no doubt call it - will deliver an extra 60 million people into central London by 2020.
Arup predicts Tottenham Court Road tube station will see its number of daily passengers leap from 87,000 to 306,000 by 2026 - more than double the increase it would have seen without Crossrail.
It is an opportunity that landlords in the vicinity, as well as developers, won’t pass up. And with such a clear investment case, a healthy pipeline is materialising - in the West End alone some 2.5m sq ft is coming on stream.
Crossrail’s imminent arrival - trains will roll in from December 2018 - has prompted a spurt of activity at the New West End Company and a new direction for the BID.
Bond Street is undergoing a facelift and projects that will better serve a greater influx of people are being brought forward - including the transformation of a little-known side street into ‘the world’s first smart street’. More radically, a redevelopment of Oxford Street is on the cards that could cost in the region of £500m.
Whitechapel will also benefit, hence its inclusion in our list of London’s up-and-coming office locations.
And it’s worth remembering that - by transporting people between Reading in the west and Shenfield in the east, as well as to Abbey Wood near the Kent border and to Heathrow Airport - the Elizabeth Line will not only benefit the capital’s core; residential values in the suburbs are also sure to rise.
All eyes will be on the property markets along the route ahead of the launch and beyond. And as we get closer to its unveiling, Crossrail’s regenerative influence on surrounding areas will become all the more clear.
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