In central London, an “old building” is rarely empty. It is a working machine made of concrete, steel, ducts, leases, and habits. People have already learned its shortcuts. A café has learned when the lunchtime rush arrives. A facilities team has learned which valve sticks when the temperature drops.
Then a familiar question arrives: do you clear it away, or do you work with what you have?
Nick Millican, CEO of Greycoat Real Estate since 2012, tends to treat that question as a design problem with financial consequences. His work sits in the part of the market where small improvements can change a building’s fate: tenant demand, running costs, leasing velocity, long-term value. In that world, reuse becomes less of a moral stance and more of a disciplined strategy.
Old buildings are not “past their prime,” they are stored value
Nick Millican’s argument starts with a simple observation: most of what you need is already there. The structure holds decades of embodied effort, and much of the carbon cost was paid the moment the frame went up. When you keep the bones, you keep that value.
Greycoat’s own sustainability positioning is blunt about intent. The firm says sustainability sits at the forefront of its projects, with a focus on greener spaces that support well-being and productivity while lowering environmental impact. That statement matters because it puts retrofit into the core business plan, not into a separate “green” lane.
Millican has also described, in industry interviews, the logic behind choosing refurbishment once you account for embodied carbon alongside operational carbon over a long horizon, especially when an older building can be upgraded to high energy performance. In practice, that means the decision is not just about what the building looks like after the work. It is about what the building costs to run, and what it costs the climate ledger to replace.
A case study in turning brown to green
A useful way to understand this view is to look at a building Greycoat has put at the center of its narrative.
In December 2023, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Greycoat announced the closing of their acquisition of 20 Finsbury Dials, described as a six-storey office building of around 140,000 square feet in the City of London. Greycoat’s portfolio page presents the plan with the kind of clarity that signals conviction: the building was acquired with vacant possession, and the business plan supports comprehensive refurbishment and repositioning.
Industry project listings describe the scheme as adaptive reuse, noting reconfiguration of the existing accommodation while retaining the existing structure and prioritising reuse of materials where possible. That is the essence of Millican’s stance. The building is not treated as a problem to remove. It is treated as a platform you can upgrade.
This approach is not gentle. Comprehensive retrofit can be harder than starting from scratch, because constraints stay in place: column grids, floor-to-floor heights, servicing routes, neighbours who keep living next door. The work forces better thinking. It also creates a different kind of asset at the end, one that can meet modern expectations without paying the full cost of replacement.
Planning is moving toward retrofit as the default
Millican’s view is also shaped by the direction of policy. In parts of London, local guidance has increasingly pressed applicants to justify demolition, with carbon accounting and circular economy thinking becoming more central to the planning conversation. As explored in this piece on Financial News, Westminster’s Retrofit First policy guidance is one example of this shift, emphasising whole life carbon and requiring more robust justification where substantial demolition is proposed.
For an operator, this matters because time risk is real risk. A development path that aligns with policy expectations can reduce friction, while an approach that fights the direction of travel can stretch timelines and costs. Reuse, in this context, becomes a way to keep projects deliverable.
Reuse is a performance strategy, not a nostalgia project
A common misunderstanding is that retrofit is about preserving character. Sometimes it is. In Millican’s frame, it is more often about performance.
Tenants increasingly want buildings that help them meet sustainability goals, reduce energy costs, and support employee experience. Several industry profiles of Greycoat emphasise retrofitting older buildings into high-performance workspaces as a route to meeting this demand in central London. Nick Millican focuses on risk-adjusted returns, which fits neatly here. Better-performing buildings can attract stronger occupiers and protect value when the market penalises inefficiency.
What makes the “case for reuse” persuasive is that it pulls the same lever in two directions. It can lower environmental impact while strengthening the investment thesis, as long as the retrofit is ambitious enough to matter.
The point
Nick Millican’s view on old buildings is, at its heart, pragmatic: treat the existing city as your raw material. Keep what is strong. Upgrade what is wasteful. Design the next phase around how the building will actually be used, and how it will be judged by tenants, planners, and the carbon math.
That is the case for reuse. It is not sentimental. It is a way of making a dense city evolve without repeatedly wiping the slate clean.
Learn more about Millican’s perspective in this piece on Upscale Living Magazine.