Tabak Construction undertakes N300m Mandilas building renovation

Tabak Construction Nigeria Limited, a building and civil engineering firm, has undertaken the renovation and remodelling of Mandilas Group’s building strategically located on Broad Street, Lagos Island.

This building is the group’s head office that monitors, co-ordinates and supervises, at a strategic level, the activities of the operating divisions and companies. It is a centrally located and attractive 16-storey office complex.

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 the group’s benefit or leased out.

The renovation and remodelling of the 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 ongoing project, Babatunde Akinyeye, Tabak Construction’s CEO, described the Broad Street building as Mandilas’ flagship.

Tajudeen Adedayo, Tabak’s project manager, told journalists that his company was in Mandilas to change the face of the building in order to make it lettable, disclosing that the renovation starts from the eighth to the 16th floor and would involve both the interior and exterior of the building.

“Before we embarked on this project, we carried out 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,” he said, pointing out that two floors of the building would be converted to car park.

He said they would be providing additional car parks with shuttle buses that would be bringing people to the building.

Giving specifics of the remodelling 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 replacing them with modern tiles; installing central AC cooling system; changing the three lifts in the building; installing new toilet systems, and a 1000KVA generator, while they would be cladding the building’s exterior with Alucoboard materials.

Ernest Onyenze, Mandilas property manager, assured on the integrity of the building, stressing that the fabric of the old building was still very strong, as 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 done, 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 lettable space.