Building near Fenchurch Street station to be stripped back to its core and extendedHow the building would look when built, with Fenchurch Street station on the leftView of the rear of the site, showing proposals for a terracotta-coloured podiumDrawing showing the position of the scheme, coloured in green, in the City's main tower cluster1/5show captionPremier Inn-owner Whitbread has submitted a planning application to transform an office tower in the City of London into a branch of the hotel chain.The 3bn-turnover hospitality group wants to partially demolish and retrofit the 13-storey building next to Fenchurch Street station and add three storeys under plans designed by hotel specialist Axiom Architects.The resulting 16-storey scheme would contain 420 bedrooms and a replacement pub, along with street-level retail and a cultural space.The 90,000 sq ft existing building, New London House, was built in the 1970s and designed by EPR Architects. It was acquired by Whitbread for 56.5m in 2023.New London House was designed by EPR Architects and built in the 1970sThe firms managing director for property Mark Anderson said at the time that Londons office market was seeing a structural shift which presented opportunities to acquire buildings that were no longer fit for office occupiers.Our strong balance sheet, plentiful liquidity, and ability to buy and develop freehold property, which is rare in our sector, leaves Whitbread very well-placed to take advantage of this structural shift, he said.The scheme would be the sixth Premier Inn within the bounds of the City of London, with the brand already present at two locations near Tower Hill, one at Bank, another at Blackfriars and a fifth near Smithfield.The New London House project team includes project manager Cumming, planning consultant DP9, structural engineers Elliott Wood, landscape architect Turkington Martin and townscape consultant The Townscape Consultancy.