The BT Tower is to be converted into an upmarket hotel, after the British telecoms company agreed to sell the London landmark to the owner of some of New York’s best-known places to stay for £275m.
BT Group said the deal with MCR Hotels would preserve the Grade II-listed building for the future, given that the evolution of fixed and mobile networks meant it no longer relies on the tower to carry microwave signals from London to the rest of the UK.
The conversion of the site, in London’s Fitzrovia, will take time, as BT Group will take years to vacate the tower because of the scale and complexity of removing its technical equipment.
BT said its media and broadcast division had already started moving services to a cloud-based platform, to ensure a “more straightforward move to a more modern and efficient premises”. MCR will pay for the site over “multiple years” as BT phases out its operations there.
MCR, which operates about 150 hotels in the US including New York’s High Line hotel and the TWA hotel at JFK airport, said the transition period would give it time to develop its design plan and engage with local communities before putting forward a final proposal.
The conversion into a hotel will be carried out by the architectural studio of Thomas Heatherwick, whose previous designs for the capital have included the new Routemaster buses for Boris Johnson when he was mayor, the Olympic cauldron for the 2012 Games and the abandoned plan for a Garden Bridge across the Thames.
BT’s 177-metre tower – which reached 189 metres tall when equipped with its aerial rigging – has been part of London’s skyline for decades, after its official opening in 1965 by the then prime minister, Harold Wilson.
Designed by the architects Eric Bedford and GR Yeats, and commissioned by the General Post Office, the tower served as a main hub for UK communication networks. It at one time featured a revolving restaurant on its top floor that was open to the public and made a total turn every 23 minutes, giving diners 360-degree views of the City. The restaurant was temporarily closed after a bomb exploded in a men’s toilet in 1971 on Halloween night, in an attack for which both the IRA and the Angry Brigade group of far-left terrorists claimed responsibility. It shut for good in 1981.
BT Group has since used the top floor for corporate and charity events, with its “infoband” screen regularly displaying adverts and messages across London, including “Control the Virus” and other government advice during the Covid pandemic.
It remained the tallest structure in the city until the NatWest Tower overtook it in 1980, and BT’s switch to fixed and digital networks led to the tower’s microwave aerials being removed more than a decade ago.
The sale of the building is part of BT Group’s cost-cutting plans, with the company having already cut the number of offices from more than 300 to 30. That included the sale of its former headquarters, BT Centre, for £210m in 2019. The company has since moved to a new hub in Aldgate, on the edge of the City of London.
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Those cost cuts have involved slashing tens of thousands of jobs. Last May, BT revealed it would cut as many as 55,000 roles across the company by 2030, citing the need for a leaner business as well as the impact of artificial intelligence (AI). The latest move will take its global headcount from 130,000 to between 75,000 and 90,000 by 2030.
BT Group property director, Brent Mathews, said: “The BT Tower sits at the heart of London and we’ve been immensely proud to be the owners of this important landmark since 1984.
“It has played a vital role in carrying the nation’s calls, messages and TV signals, but increasingly we’re delivering content and communication via other means. This deal with MCR will enable BT Tower to take on a new purpose, preserving this iconic building for decades to come.”
The MCR chief executive, Tyler Morse, said he saw many parallels between BT Tower and its JFK TWA hotel, which was a reimagining of the Finnish-American designer Eero Saarinen’s 1962 landmark flight centre and received a national architecture award from the American Institute of Architects.
“It has been a privilege to adapt the TWA Flight Center into new use for future generations, as it will be the BT Tower,” Morse said.
