How Here East’s scale and ambition deliver for East London

Delancey has backed the vision of Here East ever since Gavin Poole and Andrew Roughan came to us with the initial concept. The idea of a digital and creative campus in East London, at a time when those industries were growing rapidly, and office and studio space in and around the city core was expensive and often substandard, made perfect sense.

The key point was that Here East had the critical mass to create and subsequently deliver a broad, collaborative vision. What has made it a success is the melting pot of the academic and the cultural, the small businesses and the large, the centre we created at Plexal and the innovation that happens as a result. It sounds obvious now, but in 2012, the vision of collaboration that Here East presented was ahead of its time. Nothing like this had ever been done in London, and it can justly claim to be a pioneer.

Here East is now almost fully let. But it took time to get to this point, and work had to be done to persuade people that this was the right location for their organisation. Certainly, the conventional letting community and agency market initially struggled to buy into the vision. But Gavin and his team worked extremely hard to explain it and make it a place that people wanted to come to. Once the first businesses moved in and prospective tenants began to see the potential for collaboration and innovation, people quickly began to ‘get it’.

Here East’s strength also lies in identifying future trends in the digital and other sectors, esports and online gaming being prime examples. We recently won a global competition with a leading production company, who chose Here East ahead of sites in Madrid, Atlanta, Manchester and Frankfurt to build one of the world’s largest dedicated esports production facilities.

Our role at Delancey is to give guidance to the management and set the investment strategy, enabling Gavin, Andrew and their teams to then go ahead and deliver on the operational aspects.

We are conscious of living up to the high standards set by the original vision for the Olympic Park and are aware that to maximise the benefit of Here East for the local community, you really need to work at it.

Boosting the local economy is one thing, but integrating with it is another. For this reason, we have always offered as much free space to creatives as we can, as well as local employment schemes and scholarship programmes, working with the LLDC to ensure we are meeting their objectives for the Park.

I look forward to seeing Here East continue to strengthen. The proof of concept is in its economic and social impact, and while the sectors it focuses on will continue to evolve, I know that the values will not change.