BT Group Sells Iconic London Tower to MCR Hotels for £275m
National telecoms and broadband giant BT Group has this morning announced the sale of their iconic BT Tower building in London, which is a grade II listed communications tower located in Fitzrovia, to MCR Hotels for £275 million. The new owner plans to preserve the tower, albeit now serving as an “iconic hotel“.
The main structure of the tower is 177 metres (581 ft) high, with a further section of aerial rigging bringing the total height to 189 metres (620 ft). Upon completion in 1964, it overtook the Millbank Tower to become the tallest structure in London until 1980, when it was surpassed by the NatWest Tower. The Tower itself was formally opened for operations in 1965 by then Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
The tower originally acted as somewhat of a hub for the UK’s communication networks, but these days many of those functions have since been moved to other sites. For example, the Tower’s microwave aerials were removed more than a decade ago, as they were no longer needed to carry telecommunications traffic from London to the rest of the country.
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The sale forms part of the operator’s efforts to simplify its operations and lower costs across the company, including reducing the number of offices in its estate from more than 300 to around 30. The company, in a separate deal, sold its former HQ, BT Centre, in July 2019 for £210m and moved into a new HQ in 2021 at One Braham, Aldgate.
Brent Mathews, Property Director, BT Group, 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’s 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.”
Payment for the sale will apparently be made “over multiple years“, as BT’s equipment is progressively removed from the building, with final payment on completion of the purchase. No doubt this will be partly aligned to the fact that it will take time for MCR Hotels, which currently owns around 150 hotels, to update the building to serve its new purpose.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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and no doubt a name change will come too
Rename it the Beattie Tower, after the character in the ads played by Maureen Lipman.
its not that big, i wonder if they will embiggen the tower at least.
from what i remember, the lift goes straight to the revolving deck, as a customer of a hotel no way i’m climbing all those stairs.
One of the lifts does. There are others that serve the other floors.
The site takes up a whole block, so I would imagine the bulk of the hotel will be located in redeveloped low(er) rise buildings, with the tower housing bar/restaurant/events space and a few higher priced rooms.
I wonder if the middle section where the dishes used to be, will be built out to be like the lower bit to give more rooms/space.
it’s a listed building, so probably not.
the real question is whether we will be allowed to know its physical location now?
I wonder if we’ll see a return of the rotating restaurant?
I wonder if the stair race will continue?
There’s quite a network of those microwave link towers around the country belonging to BT, One is quite close to me at Charwelton, Northants another is at Stokenchurch just off J5 of the M40. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these are listed as well.
The Stokenchurch one looks rather pointless now that there are no antennae or dishes on it. It’s useful as a visual navigation aid when flying VFR (in fact it’s a reporting point when flying into Wycombe) but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was torn down.
The one in Birmingham is similarly dish-less and forlorn. Hopefully these eyesores will be pulled down before some berk decides they deserve listed status (assuming they haven’t already).
HIGH ANXIETY … For Dr Richard Harpo Thorndyke ?
The point-to-point. microwave dishes were removed in 2010… was that the result of the findings from the analysis of effects caused by the Los Angeles earthquake in the 1990s and/or the fact by that time the British Military had Skynet by that time ?
Replaced by fibre.
Presumably it includes some buildings that are actually not part of the Tower if not it is difficult to see how it can function as a hotel
Compulsory link to the Pathé film.
https://youtu.be/3bi2_3gljm4?si=KhgsUAkLodEdxJ7l
All I remember seeing was servers on every floor and the restaurant at the top – but that was back in 1999
This is a better GPO tower film
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGuouabkzv0