SPURRED to increase the value of its prime property, the Mandilas Group has commenced a massive renovation of its 16-storey headquarter complex, known as Mandilas House, located at Broad Street in the Lagos Central Business District.
Already, Messrs. Tabak Construction Nigeria Limited, a building and civil engineering firm, has been selected to deliver the renovation project.
Built in the 1940s, the foundation of the Mandilas Group was the provision for a wide range of first-class internationally renowned products and services, used in all spheres of life.
The Group owns about 31 properties including the Mandilas Building, a modern eight-storey office building on Simpson Street, Lagos, which currently serves as its operations headquarters. These properties are used either for Group benefit or leased out.
Owned by Nigerians, the Mandilas Group helps customers increase Nigerian content with the head office monitoring, co-ordinating and supervising at strategic level the activities of the operating divisions and companies within the group.
The renovation and remodeling of the 16-floor edifice, which, the owners say, is as old as Broad Street itself, is estimated to cost N300 million “to make it competitive with other new buildings in the neighbourhood”.
During a facility tour and a press briefing on the on-going renovation project, Tabak Construction’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Babatunde Akinyeye, described the Broad Street building as Mandilas’ flagship.
Tabak’s Project Manager, Tajudeen Adedayo, said that his company was in Mandilas to change the face of the building in order to enhance its marketability. He added that the renovation project starts from the eighth to the 16th floor, involving both the interior and exterior of the building.
“Before we embarked on this project, we undertook integrity test on the building and found it still strong. We also carried out a feasibility study, which shows that the building will sell after renovation”, Adedayo said, pointing out that two floors of the building would be converted to a car park.
He added that the remodeling envisions additional car parks with shuttle buses that would be bringing people to the building.
Giving specifics of the remodeling process, Adedayo informed that they have dismantled all partitions in the building to create open spaces from which prospective tenants could partition their offices.
He added that they were scraping off the floors and replace them with modern tiles; install central airconditioning system, change the three lifts in the building; install new toilet systems, and a 1000KVA generator. The exterior of the would also change as the company plans to use Alucobond cladding materials.
Mandilas Property Manager, Ernest Onyeze, assured on the integrity of the building, stressing that the fabric of the old building was still very strong, adding that the renovation would be finished in good time and in the next eight to 10 months, the building would be ready for business activities once again.
“The renovation will, of course, enhance the value of the building. Presently, we charge N15, 000 per square metre, but by the time the renovation is completed, the rent will go up, but will be competitive with what obtains in this neighbourhood which is N20,000-N25,000 per square metre”, he said.
The floors being renovated have a combined floor area of 3,840 square metres, where each floor has 480 square metres space available for rentage.
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