The City of London Corporation is to market the St Alphage House development site, known as London Wall Place, following Hammerson’s option as preferred developer lapsing.

Jones Lang LaSalle has been appointed to market the 1.8 acre site to potential developers.

The site was granted planning permission last autumn for a 500,000 sq ft office scheme which had been designed by Make Architects.  Hammerson, which was the Corporation’s previous partner, had been leading the development plans.

However following the sale of Hammerson’s other City assets to Brookfield this week for £520m, Hammerson said it intended to allow the option with the City of London Corporation to lapse by 28 June 2012 as the scheme did not provide sufficiently high returns for the company. The corporation confirmed Hammerson will have no further involvement in the site.

Michael Cassidy, the elected chairman of the City of London Corporation’s Property Investment Board said: ‘‘This is a globally important headquarters office site in the City of London and will benefit from the arrival of the new Crossrail link [at Moorgate] in 2018, providing a speedy connection to Heathrow. 

“The City Corporation has been successful with its development sites such as Bishops Square, Spitalfields, Allen and Overy’s headquarters and Riverbank House, which together have provided 1m sq ft. of offices.  The new offices at St Alphage should provide high returns to committed investors and could be available at the end of 2015, when it is expected that there will be a lack of comparable new high quality office space ready to occupy”.