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Developers no longer find Boris amusing. This is because the Mayor of London is dunning them for £200 million to pay for about a mile of Crossrail.
They are cross because Johnson is demanding £19.80 for every additional square foot of office space build in central London.
A consultation paper on the proposal will be published by the end of this month, promises the Greater London Authority. This will give the property industry three months to provide any number of reasons why the charge stinks. But most are already in a stew. Why? Because Boris has not had the good manners to at least hear their objections. Since January Johnson has been sending out letters, demanding the cash.
Developers with decent lawyers are telling him (nicely) to stuff his £19.80 demand, saying there is no legal foundation for making the charge, because it has yet to become official planning policy. But they are also telling clients to offer £3 or £4 just to get the Mayor off their backs. An impatient Boris is foolishly taking the money.
As a result the £19.80 levy has become discredited even before it has grown legal teeth.
A pity really, because the idea dreamed up by property consultants Jones Lang LaSalle is fairly straightforward.
JLL say, that at a conservative estimate, a touch over 10 million feet of extra lettable space will be added within a 10-mile radius of Westminster by 2017, when Crossrail is due to finish.
That number divided into £200 million comes to £19.80 sq ft.
So why not insist on developers paying £19.80 for every extra foot of space that can be let?
This is outrageous on two counts, say opponents. First, why should a tithe to help fund a line that traverses London be imposed only on those developing in the centre? Second, why just office developers? why not charge those building homes and shops as well?
To prove these seemingly fair points, a number of well-paid consultants hired by developers are now working up arguments to prove Boris wrong.
Before they put them in the post, it might be well worth ensuring they fully understand the two reasons why the Mayor might have a point, even though he has been a bit premature.
The first, says Richard Jones of JLL, who put together the policy, is that the planning rules dictate that this particular £200 million can only be raised from those who cause "harm", by adding to congestion for instance. Providing space for another 100,000 office workers neatly falls into this category.
It therefore follows that those building along the line whose developments benefit from being near Crossrail stations cannot be asked to contribute, at least not this time around.
Never fear. A nice new central government tax called the community infrastructure levy, which is specifically designed to capture what planners call "betterment" will be coming along soon. that is being designed to hoover up another £200 million for Crossrail and so give many more developers even more to complain about.
Right royal row that the Qataris will be sorry they started
There is one way to end the holy design war that has erupted over Chelsea Barracks; surrender to the Americans. The Qatari owners should abandon plans to stack 552 modern flats on the 13-acre site and sell to the US State Department, who can then build a nice new US embassy on the right side of the river instead of slumming it down in Nine Elms.
No, it's not going to happen. But by the time the long-suffering Qatari royal family get anything built and paid for, they may well wish they had sold to the yanks. Even at the expense of taking a £300-£400 million hit on the £959 million they were persuaded to pay in 2006 by their then partners, the very persuasive Nick and Christian Candy.
Not only has the Prince of Wales become involved, with his, er, "suggestion" that a classic design by his favoured architect Quinlan Terry be considered. This week the deputy Mayor of London, Kit Malthouse, twisted the knife by demanding a public inquiry into the designs drawn up by the ageing prince of the modernist movement Lord Rogers.
The scene is thus set for a long drawn-out architectural war. On one side, stands the Prince and his architectural followers, who prefer buildings of brick, stone and wood. On the other, stands Lord Rogers and the design establishment who much prefer plate glass, steel and aluminium.
These wars are quite jolly for those whose purse is not affected. The last big one kicked off in 1989 when the Prince of Wales published A Vision of Britain, promoting the cause of classicism. The streets of London provide irrefutable evidence that HRH was royally ignored. Twenty years on, the question is: have the royal family of Qatar got the nerve to ignore a fellow royal?
Time was ripe for Time Out buy
This week the Duke of Bedford surprised the property community by purchasing the suitably scruffy offices of Time Out magazine in Tottenham Court Road for £14.1 million from Land Securities.
The 340-year-old Bedford Estate in London owns around 180 buildings in Bloomsbury, centred on the square of the same name. But this is the first deal to make a splash for years. For the Bedford Estate is probably the quietest and most conservative of the inherited London Estates. It has been run since 1992 by Mark de Rivaz, who glories under the title of Steward.
In 2004 the Duke said he was “very bullish” about Bloomsbury and said £50 million had been reserved to buy some modern office blocks to the west of Bedford Square. How very wise of them then to wait for the boom to go pop. It has allowed the Duke to pick up a bargain.
Dixon mixes grape and brain
Mark Dixon produced an impressive set of 2008 results last month from his day job running global serviced-offices supplier Regus: turnover up 25% to £1 billion; profits up 20% to £147 million.
A visit to his weekend retreat on the Côte d'Azur over Easter found Dixon hard at work on plans to turn a profit from the business he runs on Saturday and Sunday. For the 49-year-old who owns 38% of Regus also owns 100% of Château Berne, a 1500-acre estate that lies in forested hills 45 minutes north of St Tropez.
Dixon bought the château, hotel, cookery school, olive press and vineyard in 2007. You might think this down-to-earth man who spends half his life flying round the world would put his feet up at the weekend. But no: part of his considerable fortune is being ploughed into increasing production from 600,000 to five million bottles a year by 2014.
This month, a marketing guru from Californian wine giant Ernest Gallo has been hired to pump the Château Berne brand into one as familiar as Regus.
