Here East hopes to attract new e-sports tenants to its Broadcast House site in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, E15.
The Delancey-owned venture, which has built a creative business community in the former broadcast and press centres for the 2012 Olympic Games, plans to turn its last remaining space earmarked for data centre use into a new offering for e-sports or film and TV companies.
The Broadcast Centre is the largest building on the campus. When Here East was first planned, the core of the building – which has high ceilings and lacks natural light – was intended to be used as a data centre. But over the years since, Here East says, the data centre market has “fundamentally changed”, with mass adoption of cloud-based services shifting the market.
Some of the data centre space has since been given over to the V&A, a BT Sports studio and UCL facilities. Now, Here East hopes to be granted a change of use permission for the remaining space, including about half of the ground and second-floor areas.
“The proposed change of use aligns with the vision and objectives of Here East, arguably, to a greater extent that could be achieved through the consented use as a data centre,” says a Deloitte Real Estate report lodged with the London Legacy Development Corporation on behalf of Here East.
The e-sports and video game sector is a “strong example” of the type of tenant Here East looks to attract, the report adds
“Staffordshire University has launched its e-sports faculty at Here East, a location it selected in part because of the growth of this sector within the QEOP,” the report says. “Here East is also home to Sports Interactive, a world-leading developer of sports management simulation games, and also to e-sports and video game start-ups based within [innovation centre] Plexal…
“E-sports and gaming have an inherent connection with Here East – it bridges the legacy of the Olympic Games and the technological and innovation focus of the Here East campus.”
Last week, Sports Interactive, the company behind the Football Manager video games, said it would move into a larger space in Here East’s Press Centre.
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