Minerva Skyscraper Faces Dumping

What could have been the tallest building in the City of London, the Minerva Tower faces a redesign following changes at the top and the failure of the company to find an anchor tenant for their current plans.Architects, Grimshaw, are now working on a new design with 14 floors above ground to replace their tower bringing the project full circle. Minerva had previously secured planning permission for a 14 storey block, also by Grimshaw in 2001 that would have accommodated 50,000 square metres of space having bought the site from Stanhope who in 1992 had planned their own 10 floor building on it. This lower-rise block was then increased to 36 floors in 2002 simply by adding more storeys in the central portion before it underwent a further revamp into the "book-ended" tower with almost 100,000 square metres and 216 metres in height that is floating around today. It will be largely clad in glass with a frittered façade and have two trading floors, still to clearly appeal to a single client, and two basement floors for parking. The new plans will see the amount on offer be reduced to 70,000 square metres.At the heart of the problem for Minerva is that their tower is so large it requires a massive pre-let by a major occupier of perhaps 50% of the space. This is an enormous amount of office space for a single company and naturally there are few clients in London with a requirement of that size.Minerva designed the tower to cater for a single major client, and more importantly they missed the boat with a business plan several years behind the market with all the leading players already decamped to Canary Wharf. The current demand for towers in the city comes from companies wanting smaller amounts of space creating the need for multi-let buildings, something British Land, Heron and Land Securities are all addressing so confidently they plan speculative builds.Minerva with their lack of financing and an inability to fund such a large project themselves are unable to take this approach of filling a tall building piecemeal and with no takers for the majority of space are left looking at other options.