Case Study: Go west to White City
Once home to BBC Television Centre, White City, developed by Stanhope, Mitsui Fudosan and AIMCo, has embraced innovation and community as its core raison d’être and has delivered a legacy.
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- White City has achieved enormous success in attracting occupiers from elsewhere in London
- The proximity of educational facilities has been key
- Vibrant pop-up spaces to enhanced the customer experience
Once home to BBC Television Centre, White City, developed by Stanhope, Mitsui Fudosan and AIMCo, has also embraced innovation and community as its core raison d’être and has delivered a legacy.
It has achieved enormous success in attracting occupiers from elsewhere in London. Publicis UK has moved some 2,000 people from across London into a single building on the scheme. Novartis has consolidated its south-eastern operations, again into a single building.
L’Oréal too signed a deal in December 2019 to move its London HQ of 1,000 staff to White City in the autumn of 2023.
In the case of Novartis, the creation of a world-class life sciences campus by Imperial College, a stone’s throw from White City Place, has proven particularly attractive. Once again, the proximity of educational facilities has been key.
For the developers, this has enabled the scheme to widen its appeal from the traditional mainstays of media and fashion, towards the growing life-sciences sector. In addition to Novartis, both Synthace and Autolus now call White City Place home.
"White City has moved beyond provision of the physical fabric of the site, to foster an emotional connection between customer and place"
For Publicis UK the move to White City Place represents the alignment of real estate with business transformation. According to CEO, Sue Frogley, Publicis UK is transitioning rapidly from a holding company towards a platform company, providing a seamless service to its clients. Hence the consolidation into a single space.
As Frogley puts it: “One company, one culture, under one roof”. Central to these economies of scale are the multiple amenities and events on offer to staff on-site.&
White City Place’s commitment to their customer has brought strong recognition of the value of amenities and community. This has been achieved by establishing their own dedicated lifestyle and events team to curate the experience for customers and their staff.&
‘The Hub’ has also been developed, a games room available year round for occupiers of the scheme. And retailers have been brought in to provide vibrant pop-up spaces to enhance the customer experience.
The White City team has developed a dedicated presentation and performance space – The Studio – for corporate events, presentations and even podcasting. They have specialist co-working space, operated by Huckletree, which allows smaller occupiers to align to those larger organisations on site.
In short, they have moved beyond provision of the physical fabric of the site, to foster an emotional connection between customer and place.