White Cross Business Park in Lancaster is home to a new office and coworking space aimed at the growing digital and technology sector. The renovation of the historic Fraser House building has brought a modern new look and layout, which is more suited to flexible ways of working.
Work has been completed on the renovations and the building will be opening to businesses in the coming weeks. This new facility has been specially designed to appeal to fast-growing digital companies and start-ups, as well as providing co-working space and facilities where people can network and collaborate on projects. This is especially useful to freelancers and smaller companies.
The building, on White Cross Business Park is owned by Lancashire County Council's economic development company Lancashire County Developments Limited (LCDL), who provided £1.67m for the redevelopment.
County Councillor Tim Ashton, chairman of LCDL, said: “There is already a growing digital sector in Lancashire, so the renovation of Fraser House provides a high-quality new base for digital businesses to grow, innovate and collaborate. “Specially designed spaces, such as this, give flexibility for businesses to grow in a way that works well for them. We already have a thriving online community of potential members of Fraser House, as well as a waiting list of over 100 people interested in signing up once we open.” Leases have already been signed for space on the first and second floors with two anchor tenants – Relative Insight and Case to Answer. Relative Insight who were originally at Info Lab, now have offices in London and New York.
They committed to growing their technology team in Lancaster thanks to the availability of this new space. Buildings like Fraser House help to encourage growing companies such as these to remain in Lancaster, by providing the right type of large Grade A office space for their business needs.
James Walkerdine, Chief Operating Officer for Relative Insight, said: “We've grown rapidly over the last 12 months and Fraser House provides us with the ideal home for taking us into the next phase of our journey. “The renovations are fantastic. Moving into the centre of Lancaster allows us to directly benefit from the transport connectivity of the city, and provide a better experience for our employees, which will also help with our future recruitment and retention.
“Lancaster has many great digital companies, but has perhaps lacked a real digital community up to now. Fraser House provides a great opportunity to address this, acting as a hub for people to come together to share ideas and collaborate - and in turn generating the next generation of digital companies.” Fraser House is an 11,500 sq ft building in central Lancaster. Co-working areas and small modular offices have been created on the ground floor, with self-contained office spaces provided on the upper floors, which are particularly suitable for fast growing companies. The building has capacity for up to 10GB fibre connectivity speeds, which is essential for the sector, and future-proofs the space for growing digital needs.
County Councillor Michael Green, Cabinet member for economic development, environment and planning said: “Since the start of the redevelopment at Fraser House, we've seen a change in how people want to work in the future, especially due to the impact of Covid on businesses and people working from home. “Fraser House will provide a space where people can come to work and innovate with others, which will be really important as life starts to become more normal once again. “The exciting renovations at Fraser House will give a further boost to our growing digital sector in Lancashire.”
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