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Selfridges, the department store chain owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Thailand’s Central Group, won approval for a new private members’ club at its flagship London outlet.
Westminster City Council approved an application to convert space currently used for staff offices into a membership venue with a terrace and private dining room. The proposal is part of a wider plan to launch a new “exclusive new shopping and social destination for its most valued customers and members” on Duke Street in the spring, according to a filing.
London has seen an explosion of high end membership only venues as affluent residents seek out exclusive entertainment spaces after the rise of flexible working blurred the lines between professional and personal spaces. They’ve also become a popular strategy for real estate owners to generate more revenue in under-utilised spaces.
Tuesday’s council approval grants the owners the right to use the space as a members’ club or for retail purposes for a period of 50 years, the filings show. The space is part of the SWOD building, which was build in the 1930s as an extension to the main classical building that faces Oxford Street, one of Europe’s busiest shopping thoroughfares.
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Saudi Arabia’s PIF became a minority owner in privately-held Selfridges last year after acquiring a 40 percet stake that had been owned by the Signa Group, the now defunct real estate empire founded by Austrian Rene Benko.
The founding of the department store in 1909 by US retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge was later turned into the Mr Selfridge TV series starring Jeremy Piven. The roof gardens, which hosted fashion shows and crazy golf in the years after the opening, were destroyed in the Blitz in 1940. They remained closed for about 70 years before reopening in 2009 for an exclusive pop-up restaurant run by French chef Pierre Koffmann, according to one of the filings for the planning approval.
By Neil Callanan
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