November 2011 Archives

A consortium backed by data centre developer Infinity has worked up a bid to turn the 940,000 sq ft Olympic media centre into a tech city-style hub.

The consortium, which is understood to be operating under the name iCity, plans to use the £355m press and broadcast centre as a hub for technology and creative industries.

Prime Minister David Cameron has an ambition to create a "Silicon Valley" in east London stretching from Shoreditch to the Olympic Park.

At the launch of the Government sponsored UK Tech City he said it will be "bringing together the creativity and energy of Shoreditch and the incredible possibilities of the Olympic Park to help make east London one of the world's great technology centres."

Infinity was founded in 2006 and is backed by Lord Rothschild's Rothschild Investment Trust.

Bidders have until noon on Friday to submit their tenders to buy the press and broadcast centres to operate after the 2012 Olympic Games.

Earlier this week further details of the Resolution Property-backed UK Fashion Hub bid were revealed including new images and news that Workspace has agreed to take 150,000 sq ft for offices for small- to medium-sized businesses.

The plans also include a design innovation and growth centre that will have a link to a major London college.

It will offer high-end 2D and 3D printing and include a demonstration suite for the latest new technology that the fashion design industry has to offer.

Other bidders for the media centre include sports retailer Decathlon, Spanish theme park operator Micropolix, and Acer Snowmec, which has proposed an indoor ski resort.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company has also compiled a list of 21 parties with requirements for space at the centre ranging from 1,000 to 100,000 sq ft including Channel 5, Loughborough University and Trumans Brewery.

CBRE is advising the OPLC.

Details of the Resolution Property-backed UK Fashion Hub bid for the 2012 Olympic media centre are being finalised this week.

Ahead of Friday's deadline for bids to buy the facility from the Olympic Park Legacy Company, more details have emerged of the UK Fashion Hub consortium's plans for the 940,000 sq ft facility.

The images below paint a picture of what the centre could look like in its legacy.

In July, Estates Gazette revealed the plans for a UK Fashion Hub anchored by Dutch firm Brandboxx, which wants to run a wholesaling centre comprising around 250 units.

Other tenants lined up for the hub include Fashion Capital, a key supplier to internet clothing retailer ASOS, and the Museum of London, which plans to create a fashion museum.

Further tenants have since agreed to take space, including plans for a design innovation and growth centre that will have a link to a major London college.

It will offer high-end 2D and 3D printing and include a demonstration suite for the latest new technology that the fashion design industry has to offer.

The UK Fashion & Textiles Association is also on board, as is Fashion Antidote, which will create a training facility, including night classes aimed at the local community.

Workspace has also agreed to take 150,000 sq ft for offices for small- to medium-sized businesses.

The Evening Standard ran a couple of nice stories this week highlighting the reverberations of the 2012 Games beyond the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

The first of those was about pop-up hotels which have been springing up across the Capital as a solution to hikes in prices of normal hotels.

A company called All About Space, which has provided temporary space at the likes of the British Grand Prix and V Festival in the past, will build temporary accommodation for two Olympic clients. More about the pop-up hotels here.

And the second piece focused on plans from Russian Olympic chiefs for a £10m+ scheme to convert Marble Arch into a showcase for the Sochi 2014 Winter Games.

The initial plans which included an ice rink, a theatre and a VIP centre, failed to get planning permission from Westminster council.

But the Russians returned to London this week with a scaled-down version.

Meanwhile, back in the Olympic Park, McDonald's announced this week that it has broken ground on what will become its largest restaurant in the world.

The two-storey 32,000 sq ft restaurant, with seats for 1,500 spectators, will only be open for the 29-day duration of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

In total there will be four McDonald's in the Olympic Park during the Games - two for the public, one in the Athletes' Village and one in the press and broadcast centre.

Here is a picture of the ground breaking ceremony:

Finally, on a personal note, I received some nice news last night after being named multimedia journalist of the year at the International Building Press Awards with the judges singling out this blog for a special mention.

Here is a picture of me at Chelsea FC's Stamford Bridge stadium picking up the award, which was kindly sponsored by law firm Davenport Lyons.

For those that haven't seen them, below are the shortlisted designs for a 50-acre area of the Olympic Park which is being billed as east London's answer to the South Bank.

Public exhibitions are being held to showcase the shortlisted designs, which were selected from more than 100 entries from across Europe, Asia and North America.

The area will become a major meeting point in the park, sitting between the aquatics centre, the stadium and the ArcelorMittal Orbit.

A winner will be announced in December.

The shortlisted parties are as follows with the pictures below - although the Olympic Park Legacy Company is not saying which party produced which design, so as not to influence the judging process:

• Agence Ter (Paris) in collaboration with architects Heneghan Peng (Ireland), engineering consultants (park) Buro Happold (Bath), engineering consultants (buildings) ARUP (London), lighting designers Bartenbach LichtLabor (Austria), and quantity surveyors Gardiner & Theobald

• Gustafson Porter (London) in collaboration with architect Niall McLaughlin (Ireland), engineers ARUP (London) and quantity surveyors Davis Langdon

• James Corner Field Operations in collaboration with engineers ARUP (London), Make Architects (London), identity and graphics by tomato (London), planting and horticulture by Piet Oudolf (Netherlands), lighting designers and consultants L'Observatoire International (New York), events and live activity planning by Groundbreaking, play consultants Playlink (London), quantity surveyors Deloitte (London)

• Ken Smith Landscape Architect in collaboration with Michael Maltzan Architecture (California), civil, structural and sustainable engineers Buro Happold (Bath), landscape designer Piet Oudolf (Netherlands), public space program and management ETM associates (New Jersey) and cost consultant, design project manager, specification consultant Davis Langdon (Australia)

• West 8 (Netherlands) in collaboration with architect Benthem Crouwel Architekten BV bna (Netherlands), engineer Buro Happold (Bath), and quantity surveyor Davis Langdon (Australia)

It's localism in action.

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson and central government are in talks over taking a share of future asset sales at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Johnson's chief of staff Edward Lister told a London Assembly committee this morning that talks were underway to allow City Hall to share in future Olympic sales.

The future sales are estimated to be worth a minimum of £650m to the Greater London Authority.

Crucially this will more than cover £231m of outstanding land debt which is being taken on when the London Development Agency transfers over to City Hall in April.

Johnson had previously pledged that central government would cover the debt, but under the new arrangement being discussed, the GLA will have to find another way to cover that debt.

As Lister hinted, it's about having greater control over the GLA's own future rather than being reliant on central government to pick up the tab. It's localism in a nutshell.

The finer details of the deal are being thrashed out, and will be made public before Christmas.

But what isn't clear is how it will affect the Olympic Park Legacy Company.

According to Lister and his panel today, the OPLC were never expected to keep the receipts of any future Olympic asset sales - they would have to be returned to the Treasury.

But would the OPLC have expected some of that money to stay in its hands to help pay for further infrastructure in the Olympic Park?

Part of the discussions going on at the moment include the existing land arrangements with the OPLC.

The finer points of the deal are going to make fascinating reading...

I revealed a list of companies in this week's Estates Gazette that are interested in taking space at the 1m sq ft Olympic media and broadcast centre.

None of the companies on the list, which has been compiled by the Olympic Park Legacy Company, want to take the entire £355m facility.

These requirements range from 1,000 to 100,000 sq ft and are from organisations that are keen to become tenants of the future leaseholders.

The OPLC is currently looking for bidders to take over the running of the media centre after the Games - the deadline for which is noon on 2 December.

The list below is crucial in giving those interested bidders an idea of which firms they might be able to approach about letting space in the future.

One of the largest potential occupiers is Loughborough University which wants 90,000 sq ft for a postgraduate sports research facility.

Loughborough is also proposing a tie up with University College London for a cell therapy technology and innovation centre totalling 86,000 sq ft, including business incubator space.

The full list of companies looking for space is as follows, with links to them where possible:

1) UK Public Media

2) Catalyst Consultancy

3) Greenwich leisure Limited

4) Loughborough University

5) RSA Trust

6) Shoreditch Trust

7) Trumans Beer

8) Bowman Clark

9) Coe Vintners

10) Fitpro Health and Fitness

11) Random Dance

12) Huntergather

13) Technology & Innovation Centre [UCL]

14) Holborn Studios photographic and film studios

15) Channel 5

16) Plug and Play

17) SPACE Studios

18) The Institute of Black Culture, Media and Sport

19) Not Just a Label

20) Ravensbourne College

21) Creative Crucible

All eyes will be on City Hall in London on Wednesday to see the outcome of a London Assembly probe into a lingering £231m Olympic land debt.

The Assembly's budget and performance committee with be questioning the chief of staff to the Mayor of London Boris Johnson over pledges that the Government would clear the debt.

The committee hearing can be seen live on a webcast from 10am.

The debt relates back to the acquisition and remediation of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

It was racked-up by the London Development Agency, but will pass to the Greater London Authority on 1 April 2012 as part of the transfer of Olympic Park ownership to the City Hall-owned Olympic Park Legacy Company.

The GLA is expecting the debt will be around £349m at the time of transfer and that Government funding will reduce that to £231m by 31 March 2014.

But crucially it had expected to receive sufficient funding from Government to pay the debt off in full - Boris Johnson himself had given assurances that this would be the case.

The fact the debt could remain raises the possibility that the council tax supplements which Londoners have paid to contribute to the Olympics may have to be extended beyond the 2016/17 scheduled end.

The Assembly's committee will also be looking at whether paying off the debt will also potentially cut funding for other regeneration projects.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company has called for applications to be part of a design services framework panel - and it looks to be a good opportunity for smaller firms in particular.

Organisations have until the 28 November to submit their applications for the four year panels. An OJEU notice can be found by clicking here.

There are three lots - urban design and architecture, landscape design and visualisation and graphics.

Here is a little bit more about the three lots up for grabs.

Lot 1: Urban Design and Architecture

Urban design and architectural services will focus on refinement and design development of elements of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The scope of work is expected to be primarily advisory with concept designs designed to the level specified in RIBA Workstage D. There will also be the need for the review of design by others - assessing and assuring design proposals by selected developers and partners - and design monitoring.

The OPLC may also bring forward small-scale urban design and architectural projects, such as park pavilions, pedestrian walkways, and the fit-out of existing buildings for interim uses that may require design and implementation.

Lot 2: Landscape Design

Landscape design services will focus on design development of the full range of open spaces within the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. This may include design services for the north park, the south plaza, circulation spaces including walkways and towpaths, and neighbourhood squares and plazas. The scope of work is expected to be primarily advisory with concept design developed to the level specified in RIBA Workstage D. There is a possibility for small-scale landscape projects initiated by the OPLC that may require design as well as implementation.

Lot 3: Visualisation & Graphics

Graphic design services and the production of visualisations will be required in support of the OPLC's marketing and communications works. Work could include layout design, preparation, and print management of documents such as design reports, brochures, project prospectus, and other print material to assist with marketing and communications, as well as the needs of design, planning, and real estate functions; preparation of material suitable for use in OPLC's website and other electronic media; design and preparation of electronic and physical presentation material for use in media and stakeholder and community engagement; CGIs and renderings to illustrate the character of the Park, buildings, and events; and 3D modelling and animations.

The 2.2m sq ft ExCeL convention and exhibition centre in London will be transformed into a mini indoor version of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

The site will house five temporary arenas for the London 2012 Olympics which will play host to 143 sessions of sport in total.

Seven Olympic sports will be held there over a total of 16 days - table tennis; judo; wrestling; fencing; taekwondo; boxing; weightlifting.

A further six Paralympic sports competitions will be held there over a total of 10 days - table tennis; judo; fencing; boccia; sitting volleyball; powerlifting.

Architects Populous is responsible for the ExCeL temporary arena designs - see a couple of the images below. In total Populous is working on 35 London 2012 Olympic venues.

Populous principal Jeff Keas said: "In some regards ExCeL has similarities to the Olympic Park in that it is a collection of arenas linked together with a common concourse.

"However, in this case the common concourse and sport arenas happen to be enclosed under the same roof, so we've used this to our advantage and developed a unique environment for each arena."

The five temporary arenas - two to the north and three to the south will have capacities from 6,000 to 10,000.

Each arena will be composed of main temporary seating structure as well as sport and operational areas.

A spectator zone for spectators with temporary toilets, retail units and catering concession will also be assembled in each of the five arenas.

Beside the five competition arenas a satellite broadcast area and operational compounds will also occupy a portion of the area within the exhibition arenas.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company has unveiled five shortlisted designs for an area of parkland in the north of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

The OPLC launched a competition in July to design a playground and visitor centre with a cafe and seating terrace, along with large indoor space for community use.

Five teams have been shortlisted to develop a design - see shortlisted teams and images below. They will be judged by a panel of experts and the winning design announced in December.

A separate competition is being held to design one of London's newest public spaces that will welcome crowds to the south of the park.

Five concept designs for this competition are expected to be revealed next week.

OPLC chief of design Kathryn Firth said: "Legacy plans for the Olympic Park are more advanced than any other previous host Olympic city and this visitor centre and playground will be one of the first attractions added to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park."

The shortlisted teams for the North Park are:

• Cottrell & Vermeulen Architecture (London) in collaboration with structural engineer Engineers HRW (London), services consultant OR Consulting (London) and quality surveyor Stockdale

• David Kohn Architects (London) in collaboration with landscape architects David Buck (London), Davies White (Surrey), consultancy Alan Baxer & Associates LLP (London) and project managers and cost consultants Jackson Coles (London)

• erect architecture (London) in collaboration with consulting structural engineers Tall engineers (London), service engineers Max Fordham (London), landscape consultants Land Use Consultants (London), artist and enabler Ashley McMormick (London), quantity surveyor Huntley Cartwright (Surrey) and play safety experts Children's Play Advisory Service (Coventry)

• The Landscape Partnership (London) in collaboration with Sarah Wigglesworth Architects (London), structural engineers Jane Wernick Associates (London), M&E engineers Skelly&Couch (London), and cost management by Turner & Townsend (London)

• Ushida Findlay architects (London) in collaboration with landscape architect and masterplanner Grant associates (Bath), structural and services engineer ARUP (London), lighting designer Speirs and Major (London), quantity surveyor Davis Langdon and play design best practice and enabling by Play England (London)

It is like the plot from a spy movie...

The police have arrested a 29-year-old man in connection with allegations that investigators working for Tottenham Hotspur spied on the Olympic Park Legacy Company board.

Baroness Margaret Ford today told the London Assembly that the last 12 months had "not been pleasant" and all kinds of behaviour had occurred to try and stop the OPLC's deal with West Ham and Newham council for the 2012 Olympic stadium.

In a statement issued this afternoon the Metropolitan Police said: "A 29 year-old man has been arrested in Sussex on suspicion of fraud offences and has been detained at a Sussex police station.
"Residential and business premises in Sussex have been searched by officers today, as well as a private residence in Sutton and business premises in Westminster."

Speaking to the London Assembly this morning Ford had said that she could not be confident that the new tender process to find a tenant or multiple occupiers to lease the stadium would also not become the subject of a legal challenge.

She said: "The thing that I have learned in the last 12 months is that there has been all kinds of behaviour.

"There has been legal challenges and people have stood behind it anonymously - all kinds of things have happened.

"My board were put under surveillance by Tottenham Hotspur and the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur felt confident enough to say that in the Sunday Times several months ago that all 14 members of my board were put under surveillance.

"The Metropolitan Police are now conducting an investigation into that surveillance.

"There has been all kinds of behaviour here that I could not have anticipated which, believe me, has not been pleasant in the last 12 months."

The chair of the London Assembly's Economy, Culture and Sport Committee, Dee Doocey, said the suggestion that board members had been spied on was "reprehensible" and "absolutely disgraceful".

It "almost beggars belief that this thing can happen", she added.

"I personally find it appalling, and I'm sure I speak for the rest of the committee, at the very idea of your board being put under surveillance."

As promised, here is a video of Estates Gazette's tour of the London 2012 Olympic press and broadcast centre.

As mentioned yesterday, the Olympic Park Legacy Company appears to be taking a much more flexible approach to who might occupy the media centre, post the Games next summer.

Ideally it wants to see technology and creative industries occupying the site, but perhaps more importantly, it wants to fill the space - and is happy to fill it with multiple tenants.

Ensuring the £355m venue doesn't become a white elephant is of paramount concern.

Interested parties to use the venue after the Games have until 2 December 2011 to submit their bids.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company appears to be taking a more flexible approach to who will occupy the 2012 media centre after the Olympic Games.

Estates Gazette was given a tour of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park today including a sneak peak inside the press centre - the 300,000 office block that sits alongside the 660,000 sq ft broadcast centre.

After the disappointment of the 11th hour pull out by the BBC to use the centre as a studio to film Eastenders, and the failure to strike a deal with the Wellcome Trust to take the whole park, including turning the media centre into a life sciences centre, the OPLC's focus appears to be broadening.

Today OPLC chiefs said they would be happy to see multiple occupiers.

But they are not talking 10,000 sq ft here and 10,000 sq ft there. They have stipulated the tenants would need to take "significant chunks" of space.

When pressed on what a significant chunk is, it turns out we are talking in the region of 250,000 sq ft, although they don't want to pin applications down on size - if the right bid comes in below that amount, anything goes.

OPLC chief executive Andrew Altman told EG: "We are happy for multiple tenants - it is really very open."

The OPLC said it would also be happy to see the space go to an intermediary such as a business incubator, which in turn would let the space to tenants themselves.

Another interesting point made today was that the broadcast centre could effectively be doubled in size if prospective tenants chose to alter the space by adding a new mezzanine level.

Keep an eye out for a video of EG's tour of the Olympic Park and the media centre, which I will post on this blog.

A new home built in London with a garden is a thing of luxury...

Only around 1,200 of all the homes built in the Capital last year had gardens.

So green fingered types could do worse than look at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in the future.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company has called for developers of the first of five new neighbourhoods at the park - Chobham Manor. And of the 800 new homes that this neighbourhood will comprise, 40% with be houses with gardens.

That equates to about a quarter of the total number of new houses with gardens registered in London last year.

The artist impressions below show firstly, an aerial view of how Chobham Manor will look and then closer looks at what the streets of mews houses and tree-lined avenues might look like.

Developers have until 2 December, 2011, to register their interest by submitting a Pre Qualification Questionnaire.

The Chobham Manor tender wasn't the only one put out this week. The OPLC is also looking for up to 12 architectural and design practices to join a four year £4m framework.

Meanwhile, Estates Gazette has put together an interesting video showing progress of one of the more striking Olympic Park structures - the 376ft tall ArcelorMittal Orbit.

Olympic chiefs are hopeful it can attract one million visitors a year and generate £10m in revenues.

The venue divides opinion, some think its interesting, some think its ugly. A fairly typical sculpture then...