Lendlease has signed Arden University for 94,000 square feet at its Turing Building at Stratford Cross on the former 2012 Olympic Park in east London, with an option to take a further 90,000 square foot, CoStar News can reveal.
The university has signed for the ground to sixth floor, while the 90,000-square-foot option is for floors seven to 11. It has taken a 15-year lease paying mid- to high-£40s per square foot, according to market sources.
Arden already has campuses in Tower Bridge, Holborn and Ealing, which it will retain. It offers a combination of distance and blended-learning degree courses to students in the UK and globally. It received degree awarding powers from the UK Government in 2015 and now has more than 27,000 students online and at campuses in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Berlin.
Lendlease launched the Turing Building, a 350,000-square-foot office, to market last year. The building is unusual in that it had secured dual planning consent for around 200,000 square feet to become education use. It is next to the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London and University College London East, which opened campuses in autumn 2023.
The Turing Building was designed by architect Arney Fender Katsalidis and is the first building to be delivered as part of Lendlease’s joint venture with Canada Pension Plan Investment Board at Stratford Cross on the edge of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
The 21-floor building comprises a mix of single and multi-tenant options. It also has event facilities, a lobby, a roof terrace and an open Everyman cinema. Level 21, a dedicated amenity floor, has breakout areas and collaboration spaces.
Nearby Sadler’s Wells East opened in February, the V&A East Storehouse opened in May and its David Bowie Centre will open in September 2025. The V&A East Museum is scheduled to open in spring 2026, and the BBC Music Studios in late 2026 or early 2027.
Speaking to CoStar News last year, Lendlease development director Brian Donnelly said around half of the Stratford Cross development has now been built, including around 1.2 million square feet of offices.
The planning consent is for 2.57 million square feet of offices, 683 apartments and 90,000 square feet of retail with future offices to be delivered in a 50:50 joint venture with CPP Investments. "The first phase was about focusing on large organisations," he said, pointing to occupiers including government body Transport for London, the LLDC itself, the Financial Conduct Authority, Unicef and charity Cancer Research UK.
He described the Turing Building as an inflexion point as it coincides with the opening of the cultural buildings at East Bank next door. "We are an interesting connective tissue between Westfield's mall and East Bank and, really, the name change to Stratford Cross [from the International Quarter] was about putting Stratford front and centre."
Lendlease recently announced a tie-up with the Crown Estate, the reigning UK monarch's property company, to create a joint venture focused on the former up-to-£24 billion undeveloped UK land management portfolio. That includes three remaining land plots at the Stratford Cross site.
CBRE, BNP Paribas Real Estate and Knight Frank are leasing agents. James Andrew International advised Arden.