Balfour Beatty breaks ground on London hotel project

Balfour Beatty's redevelopment of 3.1ha of the Greenwich Peninsula in London, UK, with a hotel and residential scheme, broke ground on July 19.

The centrepiece of the £121 million (€140 million) development will be The InterContinental London The O2 - a 19-storey, 452-room five-star hotel.

The hotel will be designed to be sustainable to BREEAM Excellent standards and will be built on land reclaimed from previously polluted soil. It will have the latest sustainable features such as "green" roofs and surrounds that will harvest water to reduce demand on the mains supply.

Construction is set to take two years, with prefabricated units, such as bathrooms, being built offsite.

The development will also include The Peninsula Tower, a 23-storey development offering 100 serviced apartments. The Queensgate Investment Fund is funding the project.

The scheme is a component of the Greenwich Peninsular redevelopment, which will provide 76.9ha of new business, leisure and living space including 10,000 new homes. The project will be delivered in the summer of 2015.

Mike Peasland, managing director, Balfour Beatty (Regional), said, “Sustainability is a key part of our offering on this project and we are using our expertise not only to reclaim a previously contaminated site but to build a hotel that uses the natural environment to provide part of its energy.”

The ground breaking ceremony was attended by representatives from Balfour Beatty, developers Grove Developments and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) plus local councilors.