Mayor Boris Johnson Thursday claimed that "the legacy of the Olympic Park had been secured as he announced a deal" to take the £300M ($459M) media centre off taxpayers’ hands, according to Matthew Beard of the London EVENING STANDARD. The former Olympic broadcast studio, which was home to 20,000 members of the media during the Games, "will be converted into one of Europe’s largest data storage facilities." Using the high-capacity digital connections installed for Olympic broadcasters, data specialist Infinity "will store information for large corporations on servers at the Hackney site." A 200-year lease was "signed between the Mayor’s Olympic legacy agency and iCITY," a consortium of Infinity and property developers Delancey, which also owns half of the Olympic Village. A workforce of 2,000 builders is due to begin the £100M ($153M) overhaul of the studios next year. Other "confirmed tenants are Loughborough University, Hackney Community College and BT Sport, which will broadcast live Premier League games from its new studios from August" (EVENING STANDARD, 5/16).
