The future of London's Earls Court exhibition centre - the home of the ICE Totally Gaming show - remains unclear following the publication of a new 'masterplan' for the area.
The 77-acre Earls Court site, which is home to both the Earls Court and Olympia exhibition centres, has been earmarked for redevelopment to create 7,500 new homes and a five-acre park. The plans have been drawn up by Capital and Counties on behalf of the three landowners - EC&O Properties, Transport for London and London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.
Question marks remain over the future of the exhibition facilities within the area as construction work is to be completed in stages. The redevelopment of the Seagrave Road and Earls Court Village phase of the project will see Earls Court 1 demolished in the third quarter of 2012. Work on the part of the site that contains Earls Court 2 is not due to start, however, until 2015.
EC&O has confirmed that it is taking exhibition bookings for Earls Court 1 up to September 2012. There is also a possibility that future bookings beyond 2012 could be taken for exhibitions to be staged at Earls Court 2 if it can be used as a stand-alone facility. Whether this will be adequate for the London Gaming show, which shows no sign of reducing in size, remains to be seen.
Olympia, meanwhile, is undergoing a £20m redevelopment over the next year to provide a long-term alternative to Earls Court for hosting major exhibitions. Again, its suitability as a venue for ICE, which has been called into question before, is unclear. The effective relocation of exhibition facilities from Earls Court to the new-look Olympia appears to be based on the assumption that the majority of shows now require less than 10,000sq.m of floor space. January’s ICE show occupied over 20,000sq.m.
Delays in the planning process may hold up the redevelopment of the site and could mean that Earls Court 1 and 2 are available beyond September 2012. Once again, it seems, there is no clear solution for the show beyond next January.
