The Old Vinyl Factory
With our joint venture partners, Development Securities plc, we acquired the 17-acre London Gate business park in Hayes, Middlesex in April 2011. We’ve been working up a masterplan for a radical £250m redevelopment of the site that pays homage to its important history with an amazing creative team including Duggan Morris Associates, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris and Studio Egret West. In November 2012 the London Borough of Hillingdon resolved to grant planning consent for the comprehensive transformation and we’ll be concluding formalities over the next few months. We’ll then be starting our mission to bring 4,000 jobs and a whole new life to an area of Hayes that badly needs it.
The site was originally acquired at the turn of the 20th Century by the Gramophone and Typewriter Company, which eventually became EMI, as a home for His Masters Voice. Over the ensuing decades, the plant became the centre of the world’s vinyl record production, pressing records for everyone from The Beatles to Jimi Hendrix, the Beach Boys and Elvis Presley. At the height of its operations in the 1960s 14,000 people worked there on a 150-acre site.
We believe that this site is part of the magic of the UK’s industrial and architectural history, but it has been hidden and forgotten for decades. It’s time for a new approach to the bland and tired business parks West of London. We’re going to uncover and celebrate the unique heritage of this place and offer something different to the innovative international companies whose investment is critical to London’s economy.
One building on site (The Shipping Building, below) is part-occupied with space available to let immediately.


Many of the empty and semi-derelict buildings were designed to be the home EMI’s global manufacturing business by the famous British Art Deco architects Wallis, Gilbert and Partners who were responsible for the Hoover Building in Perivale, the Firestone Factory in Brentford and Victoria Coach Station.

The Powerhouse
The Record Store
Our work on-site started early with a complete re-brand of the current site as The Old Vinyl Factory.
We opened a new canteen in The Shipping Building, The Vinyl Canteen, for the staff who work there.
We stuck 1000 7″ singles onto the wall…
Branded bicycles are in reception for the staff to use to cycle into town in their lunch hours.
An exhibition, Picture This, opened in a new gallery in The Shipping Building showing images of the development of the site over the last 100 years. Some amazing pictures.
The Gatefold Building, at the east end of the site, is the first phase of the wider masterplan and received planning permission from LB Hillingdon on the 14th February 2012. It offers 132 new homes, workshop units for start-up businesses, a new cafe and commuity space. We hope to be on site with this development in early 2013.
The Gatefold Building
Our masterplan for the site will transform The Old Vinyl Factory into a thriving new mixed-use neighbourhood for Hayes with beautiful streets, squares and public places, over 630 new homes including affordable housing, a restaurant complex, new cafes and shops along a new pedestrian walkway (which we’re calling The Groove) connecting Hayes town centre to the site as well as a new museum explaining the history and importance of HMV/EMI to the area. We have also already signed an agreement with Vue Cinema to open a 9-screen multiplex on site.
The view looking towards The Veneer Building, providing new homes, and The Cabinet Building, contemporary commercial space and The Picturehouse (cinema).
The new cinema, The Picturehouse.
View of the Cabinet Building and landscaped gardens
View through to the Record Store flanked by the The Material Store and The Machine Store
The view through to The Powerhouse.
The Powerhouse, the sites heat providing energy centre.
An aerial view of the masterplan
We hope to be on site building this next phase of redevelopment by late 2013. For more information on the scheme, please visit The Old Vinyl Factory website.
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