By Duncan Mackay
British Sports Internet Writer of the Year

altSeptember 24 - Companies interested in taking over the Olympic media centre after the London 2012 Games were today invited to register their interest.

The Government want to quickly establish an anchor tenant for the £330 million ($518 million) centre to stop it becoming a white elephant.

Interest already shown in the media centre includes creative, retail, education, sports, culture and office use.

"Our vision is to see creative, digital and media industries making the centres their home and taking advantage of the creative community already thriving in the area," Mayor of Hackney Jules Pipe said.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) claimed it was open to all suggestions sympathetic to the area.

Andrew Altman, chief executive of the OPLC, said: "Innovation and enterprise will help define the long-term future of the Olympic Park, and the Broadcast and Press Centres are fundamental to this through the creation of opportunities for businesses and the communities living nearby," said Andrew Altman, the chief executive of OPLC.

"As we did with the Olympic Stadium, we want to bring interested parties to the table and understand how their proposals can fit in with our vision to create an employment district."

Doubt has been expressed that such a large venue could support creative industries, which on the whole, are small-scale.


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It emerged last week that there is a “planning condition” that the buildings will be pulled down in 2017 if they are not being used, but Altman said that scenario was "not what we’re looking at".

OPLC officials are hoping the fact that the media centre is located in the Olympic Park will offer quite a unique work environment in terms of lifestyle in accessing the parkland, waterways, venues during lunch breaks and after work, will make them attractive to companies.

Like many of the venues, it was built with flexibility in mind and can be reconfigured into separate buildings.

The Broadcast Centre, which has the flexibility to be reconfigured into four separate buildings, will offer 8,872m2 of office space over five floors and 53,362m2 of commercial space over two floors.

The five-storey Press Centre will provide around 29,455m2 of prime office space.

A car park, with capacity for 1,200 spaces and a 28 coach drop-off space, will serve both buildings at Games-time.

The Legacy Company wants to gauge the car park requirements for various potential uses through this Expression of Interest (EOI) process.

Building of the media centre ran into trouble last year when the planned private investment failed to materialise because of the credit crunch, forcing the Government to step in and pick up the total bill.

Its original design also came in for criticism, with the Government's chief design advisers Cabe initially refusing to support it, dubbing the MPC a "large monolithic block".

Further work on the design resulted in it gaining permission.

The market testing will be completed by the end of the year, including a month for the OPLC to speak to interested parties about their proposals. Plans for the Broadcast and Press Centres form part of the OPLC's wider plans for the Olympic Park which will include new housing, schools, health centres and offices, along with determining the future of venues like the Aquatics Centre, ArcelorMittal Orbit, Multi-Use Arena and the Olympic Stadium, which has attracted interest from Premier League West Ham United and AEG.

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