I've written a story this week in Estates Gazette on well-known property entrepreneur David Pearl and two media specialists taking an early punt on the 2012 Olympics broadcast centre becoming a long-term hub for the media.
The partners have teamed up to create a creative industries complex close to the broadcast centre.
Pearl is working with David Brady, an entrepreneur with stakes in a range of post production media companies who is known for his post-production TV work with chefs James Martin and Anthony Worrall Thompson, and audio engineer Dan Gable.
They are adapting Pearl's 88,000 sq ft Queen's Yard industrial estate on White Post Lane, E9, to create a 120,000 sq ft media hub.
The hub aims to target media tenants, journalists and events businesses looking for space close to the 1m sq ft International Broadcast Centre in Hackney Wick, east London.
A series of adjacent derelict sites are also being targeted.
Equipment hire company Alias Smith & Singh has already agreed to take 4,000 sq ft at the redevelopment, and similarly sized deals have been agreed with independent production company Transparent Television and media training group The Bridge Training.
The partners are also in talks to let space to a well-known animation and sound production company, a gastro pub and a private members' club.
The roof of the warehouse, which fronts the Olympic Park, will be hired out for filming and events.
Having visited the site with Brady, who is a hugely enthusiastic promoter of the Hackney area for creative types, and Gable, they certainly have some interesting ideas.
Brady, who is chair of the LDA-funded Skillset 2012 Media Legacy Programme, said that media companies were increasingly moving from their traditional home of Soho to cheaper space in east London - a trend which he said was being encouraged by the development of the Olympic media centre.
Brady says they can offer space from £8 to £15 per sq ft, compared to Soho rents of more than triple that.
He also points out that there will be thousands of unaccredited journalists needing to run stories on the Games in the months leading up to the event who will need a base close to the action.
What he really has in mind is a kind of birthing pool for smaller media companies that will eventually want to expand into the Hackney media centre.
It will be an interesting story to follow.
Leave a comment
What a user pic? Get a Gravatar!