Interview: How Leeds Dock’s digital and creative community is becoming 'a world-leading hub in the city'

Leeds Dock, the South Bank waterside digital and creative community, has quickly established itself as the city’s newest and most sought after technology and media hub. As part of the South Bank regeneration scheme in the city, Leeds Dock currently boasts over 1100 residential units and features large office space across several buildings.

Leeds Dock’s most significantly deal was struck in late 2015 and early 2016 when Sky decided to relocate to the site. Now, around 600 sky members of staff are based over 62,000 sq ft of office space across an additional three buildings,

All other office space tenants are from the media, marketing, creative and digital sectors. Among these include companies such as Epiphany Search, EE, Hatch Communications, Ilk and IseePR.

This past October, Leeds Dock announced the release of additional office space as this new digital and creative community continues to rapidly grow.

Following a hugely successful 2016, Bdaily recently spoke with Tim Gee, Estates Director of Leeds Dock to find out the inner workings of this new community and find out what the future holds.

Firstly, Tim spoke with me about how the Leeds Dock concept was born. He explained: “The starting point for our strategy to develop Leeds Dock was to create a vibrant community consisting of a variety of uses to appeal to all: workspace, food, drink, wellbeing, arts, pop-up ventures and more.

“It was important for us to create a community that was not just one use such as shops or offices. This led to us welcoming innovative and design-led workspaces but also restaurants, bars, coffee, street food, leisure space, and an events programme that makes Leeds Dock interesting and relevant beyond the 9-5.

“We knew that creative, digital and technology businesses would really value waterside working so attracting them to Leeds Dock became a key focus for us as was facilitating a variety of ways and routes to reach us so Leeds Dock is easy to access.”

He added: “The residential buildings are all privately owned, but with over 1100 apartments onsite the residential community are as important to us as the business community.

“It was crucial for us to understand what both the business and residential community wanted to see on their doorstep, namely local independent leisure and retail providers and exciting events that are geared towards them and their interests.

“It is essential that the space feels as much of a community for those that live or work here.”

“The greatly improved transport links have been an essential part of Leeds Dock growing into a thriving community. The new South Entrance at Leeds Station, the hugely popular water taxis, the regular shuttle bus service and the better pathways which now mean Leeds Dock is just a ten-minute walk from The Calls – these have all combined to bring us ever closer to Leeds city centre.

“And, of course, being a part of the South Bank regeneration scheme and working with our neighbours including The Tetley and Duke Studios has been hugely important for us as well.”

As Leeds Dock is quickly establishing itself as a ‘digital and creative’ community. Tim also told me d why such a community was needed in Leeds.

“There are places in Leeds that have attracted communities of digital and creative businesses, but we recognised that Leeds Dock is the only place that offers the size and space to grow a world-leading hub in the city, he said.

“Alongside our anchor tenant Sky, we have welcomed some of the greatest in the business. This has had a very positive knock-on effect to our other businesses in a term we call ‘working adjacencies’. Creative people like to be near other creative people.

“Also, the waterside location, large residential community and space for events and leisure providers presents many opportunities that other locations can’t compete with so we had this as a brilliant starting point.

“Leeds deserves to have a thriving waterfront village like many leading UK and international cities such as Liverpool, Amsterdam and the South Bank in London and we wanted to play a key role in creating that for Leeds.”

“We were delighted to be the host and main sponsor of the Leeds Digital Festival this year, which reflects our commitment to supporting the digital sector, as does our commissioning of leading digital artists Squidsoup to create our floating light installation for this year’s Light Night Leeds festival, which was visited by over 5000 people – many of whom arrived by water taxi for the complete waterfront experience.”

As for the site’s leisure and retail offerings, Tim said that Leeds Dock is looking to reflect the city’s “thriving independent retail and leisure community.”

He commented: “We already have independent businesses including Primal Gym, Yoga Hero, Dock 29 Café Bar and North Star Coffee Roasters and we are keen to attract those that will complement them and that have a natural affinity with the creative and digital business community.

“Alongside the permanent retail and leisure tenants we’ve welcomed some great pop-up providers to the dock this year including Laynes Espresso – already a leader on the Leeds coffee scene – and the Code-X escape room game which was open throughout the summer.

“Our Home Grown market has also been a very popular addition to the community for those who live and work at Leeds Dock. Stalls include those from well-known Leeds growers and producers such as George & Joseph Cheesemongers, Tarbett’s Fishmongers, Leeds Bread Co-op and Ruby’s Fruit & Veg and thanks to popular demand this has now gone from monthly to fortnightly, running every second and fourth Thursday from 4-7pm.”

Since 2012, Leeds Dock has been totally transformed and continued to expand year-on-year. Tim explained that this is “because we have focused on growing a community that really values the waterside location and already attracted some major businesses to Leeds Dock then others naturally want to be a part of this.

“We are being very careful about how we are marketing the remaining space so that we can create a sustainable community with businesses that can work and grow alongside each other.”

“We have further workspace that is being released early in 2017 – more will be announced about that very soon.”

Finally, Tim also discussed the long-term strategy for the Leeds Dock community. He said: “2016 has been a great year for us at Leeds Dock in terms of the businesses and events that we have attracted and 2017 is shaping up to be just as successful and busy.

“We will be releasing more workspace units, announcing details of our new waterside co-working space, and working with a growing number of innovative businesses, digital artists, street food traders and local entrepreneurs. More on this will be announced early in the New Year.”