Hotfoots it to Mayfair - Mayfair Times

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GROSVENOR OWNS
4.2 MILLION SQUARE FEET
OF OFFICE SPACE IN
MAYFAIR AND BELGRAVIA,
RANGING FROM SERVICED
OFFICES ON SHORT LETS
TO CONVENTIONAL OFFICE
SPACE IN BEAUTIFUL
BUILDINGS WITH
COMMUNAL GARDENS. BUT
ITS AIM IS TO BE MUCH
MORE THAN JUST A
LANDLORD
Feature sponsored by
Living cities
www.grosvenor.com
Every year for the past four years, Grosvenor – the privately-owned
property group – has commissioned Ipsos MORI to carry out a customer
satisfaction survey on the group’s London estate.
In the first three years, the researchers concentrated on Grosvenor’s
1,500 leaseholders. But in 2009, it extended the survey to include owner
occupiers and freeholders in Mayfair and Belgravia – taking the survey
target to 4,000.
The aim was to help Grosvenor better understand its customers, to
measure how well they are being served and to identify areas for
improvement.
“We are far more customer focused now than we have ever been,”
says Lauren Buck, investment director at Grosvenor.
In fact, the past three or four decades have seen a steady shift in the
UK property industry away from a landlord and tenant relationship rooted
in a feudal past and towards a more modern, customer supplier
relationship.
The move has been accelerated by a drop in the length of occupiers’
commitments to office space as the market has changed. It was usual in
the 1970s, for instance, for tenants to sign up for 25 years, for the
landlord’s agent to give the tenant a key and then pretty much walk away
until the next rent review.
Now, ten and 15-year leases are common on even large office spaces
throughout the UK. And on Grosvenor’s London estate, where floorplates
tend to be small, short leases of five years are the norm.
The commercial reality is that where occupier movement is more fluid,
occupier retention becomes more important. But there is more to
Grosvenor’s increasing customer focus than that.
Grosvenor’s ownership in Mayfair and Belgravia includes office
properties, retail units, flats and houses. The group also takes
responsibility for the public realm – the streetscape as well as open
spaces like Mount Street Gardens and Grosvenor and Belgrave Squares.
For this reason, it is in a unique position to create something more
sophisticated than mere buildings in which white-collar employees can
work. It can begin to create and develop a complete working environment.
Marketing director Simon Philips explains: “We have a range of offices
to suit different types of company, but also to suit the same company at
different stages of its development, so they can become part of the
Grosvenor family. They can grow and expand and we’ll have something to
offer them at every stage.”
Grosvenor’s goal is to build a sense of community, Philips says. It likes
to create clusters of similar business and to put businesses with useful
skill sets in touch with each other.
“We’re also involved with amenities and public realm,” Philips says,
“and we can play a greater role in creating the overall working
environment than other landlords might.
Building a
business
community
ABOVE: 67 GROSVENOR STREET
BELOW AND RIGHT: 52 BROOK STREET
“So, a business owner who’s looking to set up an office in Mayfair can
be confident that for his or her staff, there’ll be the shops, there’ll be the
restaurants, there’ll be the green spaces that will make it an attractive
place to work – and their staff won’t groan when they hear they’re
relocating to Mayfair.”
The key to the creation of a complete working environment is to attract
new businesses onto the London estate and to nurture them as they
develop – providing them not only with office space, but also with high
levels of customer care.
“One of the things that came out of the Ipsos MORI survey,” says
Simon Elmer, operations director at Grosvenor, “is that small occupiers
sometimes didn’t feel they got the support they might need on all of the
things they have to deal with as an occupier of premises.
“I took the view that if they wanted to go to somebody about rent
reviews, lease renewals or occupancy issues, it wouldn’t be easy for them
to do that with their landlord. So, we looked to create an independent
information service for them.”
Elmer contacted a business called the Tenant Assistance Programme
(TAP), which exists to “create a bridge of communication between
landlords and tenants”. Regulated by the Royal Institution of Chartered
Surveyors, TAP provides occupiers with guidance on property-related
issues and acts as a gateway to specialist service providers.
“There’s a charge,” Elmer says, “but we pay that on behalf of the
occupiers, so it’s available for them to use when they see fit.”
And that’s not all Grosvenor does for its tenants. “We have events,”
says Buck. “Customer lunches are something we’ve done for years. About
four times a year we invite people who occupy space on the estate here
to come and meet the office team, to have lunch, get to know us better
and get to know other businesses on the estate.
“And we’ve done other drinks and social events, whether it’s at
Christies or Dunhill to really foster a better relationship with the occupier.”
Philips adds: “No business owner wants to spend time worrying about
their premises – their focus is on running their company, whether it’s a
billion-dollar hedge fund, an IT services firm or an accountancy practice.
“We’d like our tenants to be confident that when they’re with
Grosvenor they’ve got the right place at the right price, and they’re getting
a reliable, personal service that adds value to their business.”
• Entry level for a business wanting to take space on the estate is: no
space at all. Grosvenor’s serviced office offer, managed by the Executive
Offices Group, includes a virtual office. Serviced offices for two to 50
people are available in Mayfair at 67 Grosvenor Street, 28 Grosvenor
Street and 52 Brook Street.
http://www.executiveoffices.co.uk/about/brand_grosvenor/