Young people get it: Canary Wharf is now a place ‘to work, live and play’

When he first looked around Canary Wharf in the Nineties, Sir Nigel Wilson was not immediately inspired. Paul Reichmann, the —driving force behind the Wharf, had tried to poach him when he was at Stanhope, another developer, but Wilson repeatedly declined.
“I loved the people but I didn’t always like the product,” he says. “The retail was below ground and the huge buildings above ground were all focused on financial services. Retail was very much secondary, there was very little entertainment and few places to eat, and the DLR sort of worked sometimes. It wasn’t what I thought it could’ve been.”
He now has the chance to help mould the area into what he thinks it should be, having joined as chairman of Canary Wharf Group, which owns most of the east London business district, this summer.
Wilson, who led the FTSE 100 insurance group Legal & General for 11 years until the end of last year, has taken over from Sir George Iacobescu, who oversaw most of Canary Wharf’s transformation from a derelict dock to a world-renowned business hub.
He has joined at a crucial time for the district which has been bruised by the departures of several prominent tenants in recent years, including HSBC and Clifford Chance, both of which are moving back to the City of London.
Those exits, and the wider debate about hybrid working, have raised questions about the future of offices but Canary Wharf has been hit especially hard. About 17 per cent of all office space there is empty, compared with less than 6 per cent in 2017, data from CoStar shows.
Despite his initial dislike for what he calls “Canary Wharf 1.0”, Wilson, who is sitting in a boardroom on the 30th floor of One Canada Square, says he “really believes in the current direction of travel”.
Since Shobi Khan arrived as chief executive five years ago, thousands of flats have been built, as have schools, parks and supermarkets.
Hundreds more shops, bars and restaurants have been added too. Wilson calls it Canary Wharf 3.0. He expects 70 million people will visit the area this year; a third more than before the pandemic. Most will be people visiting for leisure, not work.
He bristles when reminded about comments made by his former boss, the developer Sir Stuart Lipton, in the Financial Times earlier this month that the Wharf “feels sterile and lacks the dynamism of other parts of London”.
“It doesn’t feel to me like it’s sterile and lacks dynamism. There’s people kayaking, paddleboarding and swimming, riding their bikes, running. The energy level is very good. It’s a young person’s place. They get it because they’re coming here and they use it.”
Part of his job, as he sees it, is to try to change the perception of Canary Wharf, particularly among those who might have worked there in the Nineties and Noughties.
“A lot of people who are now influential in the City worked for one of those banks in [Canary Wharf] 1.0,” he explains. “They were the people who were stuck on the DLR, who worked down here as the wind and rain was whistling through, when there were not many places to entertain and there wasn’t that street level soft touch that we have right now. The perception of the influential [decision-makers] is still that we’re 1.0. The reality of 3.0 is seen by younger people who actually work and live and play here.”
He also thinks too much has been made of the departures of some major tenants. In a slideshow presentation — a throwback to his days as a McKinsey consultant — Wilson points out that Barclays, JP Morgan, Citi and Morgan Stanley have all committed themselves to staying in the Wharf, while Revolut, the online bank, is fitting out new headquarters there.
Changing perceptions isn’t his only challenge. Wilson accepts that some of the original buildings “haven’t stood the test of time very well” and that the area will need to keep on evolving. “When we first saw them, we thought they were super exciting but actually, in retrospect, the newer buildings are probably more architecturally interesting.”
He thinks it might take 10 or 20 years for Canary Wharf to properly reinvent itself and its reputation. Even then, it must continue to “evolve and evolve and evolve”.
Wilson points to the opening of Eden Dock, next to the old Reuters building, as an example of the street level change that is already under way and making the area “nicer to walk around”. CWG has partnered with the Eden Project to build what it calls the beginning of a “green spine” through the estate.
In recent years CWG has also been trying to draw in different kinds of business tenants, not just banks and financial services firms. Khan has said that he wants the area to become a “world class life sciences hub” and work has started on what will be Europe’s largest laboratory.
Wilson expects that diversification will continue during his tenure, however long that turns out to be for. “Will you see more creative industries? Yes. Will you see more leisure? Yes. Will you see more life science businesses? Yes. Will we have closer relationships with universities? Yes.” By contrast, offices will probably become a smaller proportion of the rental pie.
Ultimately, his goal is for Canary Wharf to become a “city within a city”. “It’ll be a very diversified, wonderful place to live, work and play. [It’ll be] very green and different from the harshness of Canary Wharf 1.0.”
He knows that the change will not happen overnight and will be costly. Overhauling just one of the skyscrapers and bringing it up to today’s standards will cost hundreds of millions.
Brookfield, the Canadian investor, and the Qatar Investment Authority, which jointly own CWG, have plenty of money, but do they have the patience and willingness to see through the next stage of the Wharf’s evolution?
“We have the total support from the two big shareholders, so we’re starting in a good place,” he insists. “We’ve got lots of capital and the brand’s fantastic. Yes, we’ve got some offices that need refurbishing and modernising, but we’re seeing that across London. This is the best regeneration project in Europe and I’m excited about the challenge.”