Three schemes shortlisted for Olympic Park press offices post Olympics

Fashion, technology and leisure schemes vie to create thriving commercial district

Article posted: 20 Jan 2012

The Olympic Park Legacy Company has announced a shortlist of three organisations that are in the running to become the long-term tenant of the Press and Broadcast Centre offices in Stratford at the Olympic Park.

UK Fashion Hub, Oxylane Group and iCITY all share the Legacy Company’s vision to create a thriving commercial district on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park that will generate several thousand job and training opportunities in the process.

They will now enter into detailed negotiations with the Legacy Company based on their initial bids. All three organisations are vying to take up long leases for the whole of both buildings which in total offer around 1m sq ft of commercial space. The Legacy Company aims to appoint the tenant this summer with the buildings available for fit-out and opening from spring 2013.

The shortlisted bids are iCITY, an ‘Innovation City’ anchored by Infinity with the Broadcast Centre accommodating a cloud computing centre, research labs, post production, graphic designers and digital education. The Press Centre would become an innovation and research centre with links to higher education that would showcase British technology.

Oxylane Group in partnership with Loughborough University is looking at a sports-orientated mixed-use offer where the Broadcast Centre would become ‘Oxylane Village’ with leisure, events space, research and education and retail including a major Decathlon store. The Press Centre would be used as office space and a technology centre.

The third option is a UK Fashion Hub which would become a dedicated centre uniting the fashion and textile manufacturing sectors, creating a world-class destination for wholesalers, buyers and the creative industries. Headed by Resolution and anchored by Brandboxx and Workspace Group, the bid involves the Broadcast Centre becoming a fashion centre with offices, an incubator, manufacturing and for creative uses. The Press Centre would become a fashion college, a fashion e-tailing centre and a media centre.

Andrew Altman, Chief Executive of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, said: “We have three dynamic bids focused on the creation of thousands of jobs and training opportunities, along with links to Tech City.

“We will now go through their proposals in fine detail to make sure that they can deliver a successful ongoing legacy that will stimulate future commercial interest. Today’s milestone is yet another example of how London is further ahead in legacy planning than any previous host Olympic city.”

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Posted by Jo