London’s Olympic Park is reportedly a bottomless money pit for the UK taxpayer, with its Orbit tower losing £520,000 last year and a BBC documentary highlighting how a number of facilities and services in its Olympic Stadium are maintained by the public’s money, rather than the pockets of West Ham United who utilise the stadium as their home ground.
As such, there are those looking to make the Olympic Park into something that will prove to be beneficial to the capital following the success of the 2012 Olympic Games, and one of these ventures is Here East, a new space for startups and corporations that will occupy the grounds of the park and accommodate at least 5,500 people.
BT Sport already calls Here East their home, with the station making use of media rooms located in one of the main buildings that were allocated to press in the London 2012 Olympics. Both buildings combined offer 1.2 million square feet of commercial space to companies, with the project only partially completed at the time of this writing. It is set to be fully unveiled next summer.
A 300,000 square foot press centre that was utilised during the Olympics is set to become office space, while an 800,000 square foot broadcast centre will be rented out by data centre specialist Infinity SDC, who will use it to house a giant server farm.
It is intended for Here East to provide a new tech central hub for the capital, along with providing many new jobs in the capital. While Here East will be reserved for tech startups and corporations, it will also boast a plaza which will feature restaurants and cafes, along with space for events such as film screenings.
According to CEO Gavin Poole, “Here East will provide state of the art infrastructure and capacity for the fastest growing sectors of the UK economy to continue their impressive expansion.” Mayor of London Boris Johnson has also touted Here East to be a major player in his plans for a “smart London,” providing technological solutions that will fix problems presented by the growth of the city.
