2.19 The project has subsequently taken advantage of opportunities to bring educational and commercial development forward. There is a planned relocation of the John Roan secondary school from Blackheath to the Peninsula under a Building Schools for the Future programme funding package.27 Greenwich is a pathfinder local authority under this programme and the planned completion of the school has been brought forward to 2010 to take advantage of the available financing.
2.20 There is also an approved planning application to relocate Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication, currently based in Chislehurst, next to The O2. The development of a higher education institution on the Peninsula was not anticipated in the original plans, but given the creative and media focus of the college and its synergies with The O2 there were benefits to its inclusion. Ravensbourne will open in 2010 and the college is already collaborating with nearby institutions and the local community with an interest in creative industries.
2.21 Office accommodation on the Peninsula is now planned to be delivered in March 2009, much earlier than originally anticipated. The 2002 plans originally anticipated that work would not start on the first commercial plot until the end of 2010. Over the period of the deal to date the market for office space in London has largely been unpromising with poor take up of accommodation. Both MDL's and our advisers' analyses of the market show that there was an upturn in demand for space during 2005-2006 and MDL said that it wanted the Peninsula to take advantage of this opportunity before other competing developments did so.
2.22 The benefits of this altered timetable is that the Peninsula's first inhabitants will be moving into a mixed- used area in which it will be possible to live, work, enjoy recreational activities and raise a family. The greater Early indicators suggest the project has the potential to create a sustainable community number of people on site on a daily basis should increase the likelihood of attracting retailers to the site as well. Regeneration experts consider the creation of mixed-use spaces to be an important aspect of developing a sustainable community (see Part 3). EP, MDL and the Council have made good use of the opportunities to bring other types of development forward so that a mixed-use community is created on the Peninsula from the outset.
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27 Building Schools for the Future is Government's investment programme which aims to rebuild or renew every secondary school in England over a 10 to 15 year period. The financing for BSF schools is provided outside of the Greenwich Peninsula project contracts by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and by private companies contracted to work with Local Authorities in joint venture partnerships.