PPHE unveils £90m plan to turn lap dancing club into luxury London hotel
Hotel giant PPHE has unveiled plans to turn an east London lap dancing club into a huge new hotel as it continues its expansion in the capital.
The London-listed firm today unveiled a £90m proposal to construct a 21-story tower on Leman Street in Whitechapel, which will feature 182 rooms, a restaurant, bar, gym and office space.
The hotel will be branded as a Radisson Red lifestyle hotel, a collection of upmarket four and five-star properties across major global cities.
The site is currently occupied by a lap dancing club called White’s, which was launched over a decade ago.
In 2019 the club faced having its sexual entertainment licence renewal refused after councillors heard performers rubbed themselves against investigators in £850-a-visit VIP rooms, according to the East London Advertiser, which put performers “in a greater degree of risk from unwanted physical contact of a potential sexual nature.”
But now the site is to ditch its seedy past to become part of PPHE’s “premium lifestyle offering” in London which currently comprises two “art’otel” branded properties in Hoxton and Battersea and the Holmes Hotel on Chiltern Street.
The site, in the borough of Tower Hamlets, was acquired by Park Plaza operator PPHE in a £17.5m deal. It was bought from a company owned by veteran London property tycoon David Pearl, who acquired the site in 2004 for £9m, Land Registry filings show. The current building dates from the 1960s.
A planning application for the tower was filed in 2021, following a previous 2016 application for a residential tower which courted criticism from councillors.
According to the planning application, the current site “comprises outdated office accommodation within two poor quality buildings that do little to complement the wider urban character.
“The proposal stems from an opportunity to redevelop an obsolete and unattractive office building and nightclub into new high quality office accommodation, with an aparthotel development above.”
‘Premium lifestyle offering’
The move is the latest major London development by PPHE, which last year opened a new 27-storey hotel near Old Street station. Like with the Leman Street proposal, it was preceded by an earlier application which proposed having more residential units.
PPHE also has a knack for acquiring unusual sites before transforming them. Last year, the firm won a planning battle to build a 15-storey hotel on site of abandoned petrol station in Lambeth.
Greg Hegarty, Co- CEO of PPHE Hotel Group, said: “This site will be a great addition to our development pipeline as we continue to extend our portfolio and presence in the London market.
“It is an exciting project which leverages our ‘Buy, Build, Operate’ business model and expertise as well as our multi-brand and multi-market segment strategy.
“We look forward to bringing Radisson RED to central London, following our recent Radisson RED openings in Berlin and Belgrade.”
Above the lapdancing club, the existing building is also home to technology investor Antler.