£225m Trocadero to be gutted

The Trocadero in Leicester Square has been bought for £225million by a company which plans to gut the building.

Golfrate beat off competition from companies headed by Nicola Horlick and Robert Tchenguiz for the site.

It plans to convert the Trocadero into a shopping centre with a hotel or offices above, similar to a scheme Golfrate is developing in Sutton.

Golfrate is owned and run by Asif Aziz, 38, whose family came originally from Africa.

The company has been steadily investing in commercial property and its London portfolio was worth more than ?1billion before its latest acquisition.

The portfolio includes blocks in Park Lane and Strand, the Scotch House block in Knightsbridge and tracts of Holloway Road and Tooting.

A spokesman for Golfrate said: "The Trocadero's been a dog, but we're going to rewrite history. You've got to spend money to make money.

"We'll take out everything that's in the Trocadero at the moment, put several large shops on the ground floor and use the upper part of the centre either as offices or a hotel." The purchase prices equates to £450 per square foot, a bargain for the location, but it reflects the building's troubled recent history.

Given its location, between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, it is one of the world's biggest tourist magnets and should have been a successful venue.

But almost a sixth of its 500,000 square feet of commercial space has been standing empty since Segaworld closed in 1999, and the rest of the interior appears tired and dated.