The Old Vinyl Factory £250m redevelopment | Hayes | U/C

David West, Architect
EgretWest.com
@EgretWest

Preparing for Design Review really helped our team to focus on telling the story. Having to communicate the layers of design required in creating a mixed use urban environment within 12 A1 boards and a twenty minute presentation is a healthy discipline. It encourages designers to distill and define a key design principle.

Results of Design Review:

We had a good review in that our strategic thinking was applauded and ideas for the site were supported. However ,there were a few helpful comments made regarding the Masterplan layout. Here’s a couple:

Bigger Picture – The panel wanted to see more information about how the proposal might fit into wider strategies for Hayes, bearing in mind the future Crossrail Station and availability of further brownfield sites.

Redefining the space – They felt our distribution of space could be more clearly defined and that the Powerhouse Square should be the heart of the place.

Our changes – The Powerhouse did indeed become the buzzing heart of the place – framed by active uses on all sides with a performance venue in the middle supported by the cinema. Vinyl Square – the quieter of the two spaces – became more about providing an entrance and a grand setting for the site as a whole.

The Record Stack car park – Our original design included multi-story car parks. Multi-storey car parks are likely to have a bland façade and being so big, they can also block access to buildings and spaces behind them. The Design Review panel pointed out some of those problems, as well as the impact on future developments. We reworked our car parking strategy and even came up with a new idea for a ‘record stack’ car park.

All of the moves above made the framework plan better, demonstrating the positive impact of Design Review on the evolution of a proposal.

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Thomas Bender, Review Advisor
Cabe at the Design Council
@Cabe_Updates

The Vinyl Factory scheme was a hugely interesting scheme to work on as a design review advisor. The visit to Hayes revealed a hidden gem: once the heart of EMI’s operations, the site is still immersed with the aura of a key chapter of the British music industry. Huge white factory buildings with some Art Deco touch give the place the feel of a stage set – a place with tremendous potential for Studio Egret West to rejuvenate and reinvent.

The passion and excitement came through at the Design Review meeting and won over our panel of Built Environment Experts. The panel, however, kept an eye on the pragmatic aspects of the project looking at how the scheme fitted into the wider context of Hayes. We wanted to ensure that the project created a truly animated place where people want to work and live, we challenged the design team to really test what each place and street will feel like and redefine the car parking strategy. We discussed the planning process and how to make sure the outline application reflected the high ambitions apparent in the complex masterplan proposal.

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Noel Farrer, Built Environment Expert

The Vinyl Factory is a scheme that highlights the central importance of the public realm in place making. The scheme had a distinct character which was imaginatively developed by Studio Egret West to create a vision for the site which was far reaching and would transform the wider neighbourhood. The compelling way The Vinyl Factory’s cultural heritage has been used to inform the design of spaces and buildings is down to the confidence of the design team and client.

The design review process was a pleasure because we were working on a level where all parties were looking to get the best from the scheme. No one needed to be defensive about areas of inadequacy in decision making, leadership or design paucity. This allowed a sharper analysis and honesty. The criticism was understood, digested and taken on board.

What a great experience. A true endorsement for Design Review and the importance of landscape. I was happy to part of it.

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Alex Smith, Planning Manager
London Borough of Hillingdon

The Design Review Process allowed for an independent and impartial review of the site to take place. On a project of this size, the design will evolve through the course of the development and the design review provided an excellent opportunity to stop and consider, alongside fresh sets of expert eyes, how and why the project had got to its current design.

The feedback was largely positive from the expert panel and the comments with regards to how the development would fit within the wider Hayes environment, the hierarchy of spaces within the site, and potential amendments to the Groove and Blyth Road gave excellent food for thought for the next evolution of the design.

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Research centre plan to kickstart Old Vinyl Factory scheme

A research centre will be set up at the former EMI headquarters in west London in a bid to kickstart development at the wider Studio Egret West-designed project.

The Central Research Laboratory will form the first phase of the Old Vinyl Factory scheme after being granted a £7.7 million loan by London mayor Boris Johnson.

Developer Cathedral Group will run the centre, which will provide a home for start-up inventors and manufacturers and is intended to help attract other tenants to the 113,000 sq m project.

The facility takes its name from a research centre that used to be operated by EMI at the site and was responsible for developing technology such as the CAT scanner.

One of five existing buildings at the site will be renovated and rebranded the Record Store Building to host the facility. The Central Research Laboratory will initially occupy half of the 9,300 sq m building with the rest available for future expansion.

Features will include a small-batch manufacturing plant and companies will be able to apply for part of a £5 million pot allocated for seed funding.

The Old Vinyl Factory project is described by Cathedral Group as “a design of many hands” and will eventually add up to 112,953 sq m of development including 510 homes alongside offices, shops, restaurants, cafes and cultural and leisure facilities.

Studio Egret West has masterplanned the scheme and is responsible for designing several other buildings. Duggan Morris Architects has also been appointed to design three buildings and AHMM is designing another.

Construction is expected to start in spring 2014 with the project due for completion a year later.

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A derelict complex of buildings in west London where the records of Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix were pressed is ready to rediscover its historical role as a centre for advanced manufacturing.

The Old Vinyl Factory in Hayes, Middlesex, was once the home of music companies EMI and HMV, employing 22,000 people in its 1960s heyday.

As the headquarters of industrial group Thorn EMI, it also became a hub of British engineering innovation, spawning the development of broadcasting systems, stereo, airborne radar and the CAT scanner.

Now a joint venture between developers Cathedral Group and Development Securities – backed by London mayor Boris Johnson – it is moving to revitalise the windswept 17-acre site as London’s first “soup-to-nuts” incubator for high-tech manufacturing entrepreneurs.

Advances in rapid prototyping through the use of 3D printers are revolutionising product development by allowing individual entrepreneurs and researchers to make complex components quickly and at low cost.

Reviving the site’s historic name of the Central Research Laboratory, the joint venture aims to combine this technology with commercial training, offering research and development space, a small-batch production facility, mentoring and seed funding.

The scheme is one of four London projects in the running to win investment from a £40m regeneration fund secured by Mr Johnson. Cathedral is bidding for £7.7m of the £11.2m it needs to create the facility, with the rest to be provided by the developers. A decision is expected in weeks.

The developers will also be raising a £5m fund via an enterprise investment scheme, a Treasury tax break to encourage investors in start-ups.

Martyn Evans, marketing and creative director at Cathedral Group, said: “The EIS fund is probably the most crucial element of the scheme. Other facilities rarely have money attached to them.”

Hillingdon council, the local authority, hopes the scheme will breathe new life into Hayes. Beyond the Central Research Laboratory, the wider £250m mixed-use project will provide 630 new homes with public spaces, restaurants, cafés, shops, a multi-screen cinema and museum.

Nigel Cramb, partnerships and business engagement manager at Hillingdon council, said the town had struggled to replace the jobs lost after the decline of manufacturing across London’s suburbs in the 1970s and 1980s. “Hayes has suffered for so long . . . This could deliver a new heart to the town.”

If developers and civic leaders are confident the scheme will succeed, the question remains why the revival has taken decades to happen. Most agree that the trigger for regeneration was Crossrail, the east-west London rail route that opens in 2018. It will stop at Hayes, just 300 yards from the facility. Mr Cramb said: “Crossrail has been the catalyst. We’ve had a lot of interest over the past four years from developers who’ve realised it’s not that far away.”

Kit Malthouse, Boris Johnson’s deputy mayor for business and enterprise, said the scheme would aim to replicate for west London’s high-tech manufacturing sector the conditions that had been so successful for software and digital companies in east London. “This facility is about planting acorns.” He warned that entrepreneurs were likely to remain constrained by the investment environment, with evidence of a lack of risk capital available to small businesses.

“We’ve lost the VC feeling. We just don’t have the level of investment we used to. Finding the funds you need – unless you know someone rich – is hard.”

Hillingdon still has a base of international companies in business parks which hosts companies including Apple, IBM, Sharp, Toshiba and Canon a short distance from the Old Vinyl Factory.

Mr Evans said the development would distinguish itself from “bland” business parks by mingling homes, offices and the research lab, while preserving the character of the site’s historic buildings.

These were designed by the Art Deco architects Wallis, Gilbert & Partners, who built the Hoover Building in Perivale and the Firestone Factory in Brentford.

“It was built at a time of enormous technological change so it has large, adaptable floorplates. Work was hot, therefore it’s designed to be easily cooled with high ceilings and windows that open. It’s the sort of green and adaptable building that companies want today,” he said.

Contracts were exchanged last year on the first part of the wider scheme with the private residential arm of construction group Willmott Dixon, called Be:here. Work on 132 apartments, workshop units, a café and a community space is due to begin in the next two months.

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Willmott Dixon has entered a £32.5m deal with Invesco Real Estate for the delivery and management of 118 private rental sector units in Hayes, west London.

IRE will purchase the freehold of the Hayes site and fund the development of the PRS units on behalf of a UK local authority pension fund.

Willmott Dixon’s PRS company be:here will deliver the scheme and manage the units following completion in 2016.

It is IRE’s first investment in the private rented sector in the UK.

Last December, be:here announced it would build 132 apartments at the Old Vinyl Factory site in Hayes (pictured), adjacent to the new Hayes and Harlington Crossrail station, after it completed contracts with Development Securities and Cathedral Group for the Gatefold building, part of the Old Vinyl Factory site in Hayes.

In July 2013, be:here announced it had reached an agreement with M&G Investments’ secured property income fund for its first project in east London, a 233-apartment private and affordable mixed scheme adjacent to the East India Dock DLR station.

In its company accounts for 2013, the contractor said that as income would be drawn progressively over the construction phase, “the full benefit will not be felt for some time”, but that PRS schemes were intended to become a growing part of its Regen division.

Willmott Dixon’s chief executive of Regen Andrew Telfer said the deal provided further demonstration that the PRS model would work for institutional investors.

“The site is a good example of those that be:here is targeting in its pipeline, with a local under-supply of quality homes for young professional renters and being located by what will become one of west London’s busiest Crossrail stations,” he added.

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Residential developer Hub has exchanged contracts to develop 213 homes at Cathedral Group and Development Securities’ £250m Old Vinyl Factory development in Hayes, west London.

The housing developer will take forward the development of two sites known as the Boiler House and Material Store at the site of the former record factory.

The first phase of the multi-phased regeneration scheme – the 132-home Gatefold Building being brought forward by a partnership between Invesco and Willmott Dixon – is already under construction.

The 17-acre scheme, one of the largest regeneration projects in west London, will create a new community hub with more than 630 homes and 750,000 sq ft of commercial and leisure space, including a 7-screeen multiplex cinema, museum, restaurant complex, shops and bars.

Alongside this, the redeveloped 100,000 sq ft Record Store building will become the home of the Central Research Laboratory.

HUB plans to re-submit detailed plans for both sites in the coming months.

Retaining the incumbent award winning architects Studio Egret West and Duggan Morris, HUB will tune the residential product in line with their focus on simple, high quality design and intelligent use of space.

The purchase will be the third by HUB, which was incubated by the founders of Squarestone in late 2012 as a developer of much needed mid-market housing in London.

It will join a development pipeline of over 500 new homes in developments in Acton and the Royal Docks.

Steve Sanham, development director at HUB Residential said: “Cathedral’s redevelopment of the Old Vinyl Factory is exactly the kind of scheme that we are proud to be part of – regenerating a classic part of London’s history, with a development that will give a huge amount back to the local community and London as a whole.”

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What is believed to be the first building of Sir Owen Williams, one of the giants of 20th Century British engineering and architecture, is to be refurbished.

A £6m joint venture of Workspace Group and Polar Properties has secured planning permission for its redevelopment of Enterprise House in Hayes.

The development will provide 98 apartments and a 38,000 sq ft business centre for creative industries.

Built in 1912, it originally housed the machine shop of the His Master Voice (HMV) gramophone production factory campus at Hayes that by the 1960s employed 22,000 people.

It is said to be the only remaining factory building in Europe designed by Arthur Blomfield and Sir Owen Williams. It was built by the Trussed Concrete Steel Company with a reinforced concrete frame, with posts and beams using the Kahn system of reinforcement patented in 1903 by Albert and Julius Kahn in Detroit, USA.

Workspace plans to refurbish the Grade II* listed factory building which will provide 38,000 sq ft of space tailored to the needs of small businesses with a particular focus on creative industries. One of the existing tenants to be retained will be the Vinyl Factory which specialise in producing high quality, limited edition, vinyl records.

Workspace chief executive Jamie Hopkins said: "We are delighted to have secured approval for Enterprise House in Hayes, a location that will benefit greatly by the arrival of a Crossrail station adjacent to the property. Enterprise House is one of a number of properties, in similarly advantageous locations to Crossrail, which Workspace is redeveloping.

“This is part of our wider redevelopment programme to enhance both core operational income and capital values by repositioning properties. The Enterprise House development will provide tailored space to the needs of small creative businesses, a capability which is at the heart of Workspace's key strengths."

The wider redevelopment of the 150-acre Old Vinyl Factory campus is being led by Cathedral Group, and parent company Development Securities.

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Cathedral Group and Development Securities have signed three new occupiers at The Shipping Building at The Old Vinyl Factory, their redevelopment of the former headquarters of EMI in Hayes, West London.

Sonos, Host Europe Group (HEG) and CHAMP Cargosystems are the three new companies to occupy The Shipping Building, a major grade A refurbishment of the landmark art deco building designed by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners.

Since the site’s acquisition in April 2011, The Shipping Building has been extensively refurbished and modernised to provide high quality office and creative space.

All three companies have taken 10-year leases. Sonos, the US pioneer of wireless music systems, has taken 5,812 sq ft on the 1st floor, whilst HEG, Europe’s largest privately-owned web hosting provider, has taken 8,875 sq ft on the 5th floor.

In addition, the 10,143 sq ft 6th floor has been taken by CHAMP Cargosystems, a global IT provider serving the air cargo industry. The refurbished building is now 85 % let, with 19,400 sq ft of space remaining at a quoting rent of £20.00 per sq ft.

The lettings, which were secured by joint agents Savills and Altus Edwin Hill, underline growing occupier demand in West London and the business potential of Hayes, which is set to benefit from the planned Crossrail connection at Hayes and Harlington station.

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Construction has begun in Hayes on the site of the Old Vinyl Factory for a new media college which is due to open in September 2016.

Media and entertainment group Global announced that its university technical college will house 800 students looking to work in the broadcast and digital media industry.

Ashley Tabor, Global’s founder & executive president who came up with the idea of the academy, said: “There is a real shortage of young people coming out of school with the skills needed to work in the broadcast and digital media industries.

"The Global Academy will give our students the practical skills they need to hit the ground running as well as teaching them core subjects in a practical way."

Academic and vocational training will come together for 14-18 year olds who will sit GCSE's and A levels, as well as train to get the digital skills needed to work in the industry.

Courses which are accredited the college's partner University of Arts London (UAL) will includes radio and TV production broadcast engineering, app and web development, script writing and other journalistic choices.

Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Education and Children's Services, Councillor David Simmonds said: "This college will be transformative in a rapidly developing area for young people with a media focus in Hayes.

"The council is delighted that both students and teachers can bring a new element of education and entrepreneurship to the borough."

Plans for the academy include extensive recording and filming studio space, a theatre and a four-storey atrium.

Students will be taught a mainstream key stage 4 and key stage 5 curriculum together with diplomas in broadcast and digital media.

Open Days are already open for registration where the principal will be available to speak to prospective students.

Mr Tabor said: "We want to give young people from diverse backgrounds the opportunity to get a foot on the ladder in the media industry and connect the dots between their core GCSEs and A-Levels, and practical life skills needed in the real world.”

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In September 2016, the Global Academy will welcome its very first intake of students.

Based in Hayes, in the London borough of Hillingdon, it will be a University Technical College offering vocational learning pathways, including GCSEs, A-Levels and UAL Diplomas, for students between the ages of 14 and 18. Our university partner is the University of the Arts, London (UAL), who have accredited the specialist qualifications on offer.

Initially, in September 2016, we will be accepting 100 students aged 14 to join us in Year 10, and 100 students aged 16 in to year 12.

Built on a newly re-developed site with state-of-the-art facilities, the Academy is designed to help young people learn the technical skills needed to succeed in the music and entertainment industry. Students will learn skills to become Radio & TV Producers, Broadcast Engineers, App & Web Developers, Script Writers, Event Managers, Music Publicists or Journalists, not just for the Global Group (owner of brands including Capital FM, Heart, LBC and Classic FM), but for the entire creative media industry.

Built on the old EMI vinyl record business, the Academy will feature recording and filming studio space, theatres and a four-storey atrium, and has been purpose built. In the heart of a rapidly developing area, it's the ideal place for young people wanting a high quality education with a media focus.

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