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Housing benefit? Tailored high-tech office space comes to London
Whether we're talking dot-com boom or gloom, there always appears to be lack of suitable premises for high-tech start-ups, whether in Silicon Valley, London or any one of dozens of other areas around the world.

By editorial@silicon.com

Published: Thursday 30 November 2000

Against that backdrop, the property arm of one company - LMS, that's London Merchant Services - is trying to tempt businesses to redeveloped facilities in London's Fitzrovia, in the shadow of the BT Tower. It's worked on similar projects in San Francisco, and claims the central location will be attractive.

In itself, this isn't huge news. However, it comes at a time when the Millennium Dome is being eyed up as the site for a high-tech 'cluster' for the 21st century. Whether it will end up as an industrial park, some kind of conference centre, or - perhaps most likely - a combination of the two isn't clear.

What is clear is that many people working in the new economy - the entrepreneurs, consultants, technicians and IT chiefs that silicon.com speaks to every week - favour this recasting of the Dome. They point to its accessibility, its space, and the ability these days to turn the most barren of environments into the kind of buzzing spaces that allow the cross pollination of ideas start-ups thrive on.

Regeneration schemes such as LMS' in Fitzrovia will continue, and that's a good thing. At the same time, a high-tech Dome may work - it certainly seems to have support, if not from BT, NTL and Sun, previously said to be interested.

But the idea could equally just be a case of a misguided Dome II - after all, good horrors tend to have sequels.