Smart new home for stone that’s steeped in history

"What's that?" said one, before squinting at a peeling plaque. Inspection told her they were looking at the top slice of The London Stone, which has sat hereabouts since at least 1198, and from where all distance measurements from London radiated.

This is by way of introduction to the news that the developer of Cannon Street Station over the road would rather like the stone returned to its original spot. That just happens to be in the foyer of a 386,000 square foot office block being built by the celebrated 84-year-old American developer Gerald Hines

The City will shortly be presented  with drawings showing how the neglected artefact could be far better displayed to the tens of thousands who stream in and out of Cannon Street underground and overground stations each day.

"We'd be delighted to rehouse it," says Mark Swetman, Hines project director for Cannon Place, where Laing O'Rourke began main building works last summer on the horrendously complex foundations, which plunge through the station and into the remains of a Roman palace.

The work has involved threading huge, steel columns down through the concourse and 19th-century brick arches to rest on a mass of concrete piles. These take the weight of the steel-framed block, which cantilevers out 21 metres in each direction from above the station roof. The building will weight about 50,000 tonnes.

That work is nearing completion. But it has added a year and between £75 million and £100 million to the cost of the £400 million project, in which giant Russian developer PIK also has an equity stake. The project is due to finish in the summer of 2011.

About £30 million is going towards rebuilding the main line and Underground stations for long-suffering passengers. The overground station will be finished in two years' time. But Tube travellers will have to wait until 2012 for their improvements to be completed.

Hines bought the site in 2002 for £53 million, and then spent five years getting Cannon Place site-ready. It was not easy, however. For the American company had the dubious pleasure of dealing with both Transport for London and Network Rail. The management of both organisations tend to treat developers in much the same way their respective unions treat passengers.

There came a point when Hines threatened to pull out. The row put discussions about the issues of working over a live station back on a sensible track. Swetman says that working relationships are now fine. But another member of the Hines team said: "Only Gerald Hines would do this project." So perhaps the least the City could do for Gerald Hines is let the American have The London Stone.

Tale of a tortoise and the Heron

In the year 2525, if man is still alive and the 46-storey Heron Tower in Bishopsgate has crumpled in the heat, someone may come across a small stainless-steel box with a copy of the Evening Standard from 18 June 2008 containing an article on Gerald Ronson headlined somewhat bravely "My London tower is the only one that'll be built".

But it was not just a copy of your Standard that was lowered into the foundations of the tower yesterday morning.

The time capsule held the shell of a tortoise that Ronson assured 70-80 white-helmeted watchers had "died of natural causes". The shell was there to provide good feng shui; it represents a "strong back", apparently.

Sadly a last-minute plan to insert a model of the 663-foot tower had to be abandoned. The 100-foot mast that makes it the tallest tower in the City prevented the model from fitting into the two-foot deep box.

Relic in need of some dignity

A group of Irish investors is said to own the small empty office block at 111 Cannon Street that houses part of the London Stone. First references to the stone that stood in the centre of Cannon Street until 1742 were made in 1198, when it was said to be the key Roman milestone from where all distances were measured.

The top was clipped from the stone in 1742 (the rest presumably remains buried) and put in the wall of St Swithin's church, which was demolished in 1960. The stone was then put in its current resting place. There have been various attempts to give the artefact a more dignified home lately, but these have been studiously ignored by the City Corporation. Now US developer Hines wants to give it pride of place in his new development, and plans to talk to the City in a few weeks' time.

Builder's fashionable idea could be the way out of the Noho zone for Kaupthing

Green shoots seem to be appearing on the three-acre Noho Square site just north of Oxford Street.

No, that does not mean the plan to give over the empty ground on which the old Middlesex hospital stood to allotment holders is about to happen. What does seem to be happening is that Icelandic bank Kaupthing is getting close to making a decision on what to do with the site from hell that has cost it more than £220 million — and is now worth at least £120 million less.

Until now, the idea has been to sign a full joint venture agreement with development manager Stanhope, which is keen to build some groovy, loft-style apartments. That (should) recoup some of the Icelandic bank's losses: these were brought about by getting over-exited by the Candy brothers, whose luxury flats dream persuaded the bank to buy the site from the NHS in 2006 for £175 million.

But today's Building magazine says there are three developers who want to buy the site outright. One of those is Hadley Homes, which has come up with a clever plan.

The London housebuilder has by all accounts persuaded the London College of Fashion to rent 250,000 square feet of teaching space as part of million-square-foot mixed-use development. The idea is the college would consolidate to Noho from six sites scattered from Shepherds Bush in the west to Old Street in the east.

Moving close to the centre of the rag trade feels like a good idea. How their parent body feels about it is another matter, however.

The parent body of the fashion college is the University of Arts. It has just signed up to take 6500 students to the King's Cross development. But clearly the fashion students want to be somewhere more fashionable.