BBC Announces Sale and Sublet of Media Village

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£87 million deal will see Wood Lane site refurbished and renamed White City Place

The BBC has announced the sale and sublet of its Media Village site on the corner of Wood Lane and The Westway which will now be known as White City Place and will become "the commercial heart of White City".

Under the commercial terms agreed with development Stanhope and Mitsui Fudosan UK Ltd, the BBC will receive £87 million for the sale of four acres of freehold land and the lease of six buildings, three of which will continue to be occupied by 3,000 BBC staff.

The BBC says the sale is part of ongoing plans to dramatically reduce the size and cost of its buildings and will make £33 million of annual running cost savings.

A White City Place website has been launched, showing the proposed new layout with three new buildings added to the front of the site, which is currently landscaped.

The developers say the three buildings being vacated by the BBC - White City One, Media Centre and Garden House - will be fully refurbished and brought back to the market from late 2016.

David Camp, Chief Executive of Stanhope Plc, says: "White City Place will become the commercial heart to White City. Together with Television Centre, we will be delivering close to two million sq ft of office space and nearly 1,000 new homes over the next five years.

" Alongside the BBC studios and Soho House at Television Centre, the John Lewis store, opening 2018, and the Imperial West campus on Wood Lane, White City is fast becoming the place to be."

White City Place was the original home of the Franco-British Exhibition of 1908, which created a vast complex of white pavilions and pleasure parks in Wood Lane and which gave the area its name of 'White City'.

The site then provided the home for the 1908 Olympics stadium, the first Olympic Games to be held in the UK. Parts of the swimming pool were discovered when the foundations were laid. The site was later turned over to greyhound racing before the BBC acquired it in the mid-1980s.

White City Place currently accommodates a range of buildings designed and utilised as office and broadcast technology space across 17 acres on Wood Lane, within a short walk of Television Centre.

Stanhope and Mitsui are currently redeveloping the 14 acre site Television Centre - including 500,000 sq ft of offices, 950 new homes, Soho House, three BBC studios and the newly opened BBC Worldwide HQ.

The developers say they will undertake major landscaping and infrastructure works to White City Place to significantly improve the public realm, including gardens and plazas and to reinforce connections with the nearby stations, Television Centre and Imperial West.

Stanhope and Mitsui intend to submit a planning application later this year for new office development and landscaping on the southern gateway entrance site.