Three companies have signed up to a workspace provider at Southampton’s Ocean Village.
Mergers and acquisitions advisor Barnsgate Solutions, commercial cleaning contractors City Cleaning and recruitment agency Morgan Hunt now have an office each at Ocean Village Innovation Centre (OVIC).
With 67 offices and six meeting rooms over 30,000 sq ft, OVIC is run by Oxford Innovation Space, which runs 31 innovation centres across the UK and Ireland on behalf of building owners from the public, private, third and higher education sectors.
Stephen Deller, OVIC’s Centre Manager for nine years, said: “We’ve experienced a record summer surge in workspace enquiries from businesses requiring a presence here in vibrant Southampton, home to more than 9,200 companies and a city population of near 260,000.
“On top of the hattrick of signings, we have 10 proposals for consideration with a range of companies and organisations.
“Occupiers are choosing workspace which fits current operational requirements and doesn’t tie them into onerous obligations, providing flexibility and affordability.
“We are also seeing the continued trend for hybrid working – employees are far more comfortable hotdesking these days whereas, before the pandemic, some preferred their own private ‘deskdom’ at work, effectively blocking their desk for others to use.
“The hybrid work trend has also meant employers need fewer desks on a daily basis, lowering property overheads for them, and we think this is one of the reasons behind enquiries.”
Five-storey OVIC, which celebrated its 15th anniversary last December, has an ecosystem of entrepreneurs and innovators.
They are provided with complimentary strategic business support to help them grow.
“This includes one-to-one strategic advice by the in-house business growth director, and, through partnerships, transformative business programmes and networking/knowledge events,” added Stephen.
Periodic business diagnostic and review sessions take place with occupiers, with agreed bespoke support reflecting the needs of each business’ life-cycle stage.
The centre has seen a number of successful companies outgrow the building, “which, as a stepping stone, is our aim”, Stephen said.
They include DFS Composites, a global supplier of blade tooling solutions for the wind power industry, which expanded into Faraday Business Park at Lee-on-the-Solent, near Fareham.
DFS Composites, which also has offices in India and China, started out as a virtual customer at OVIC before moving up into a shared office and other self-contained offices on site.
OVIC repeatedly named growth opportunities for the business, such as international trade, along with unlocking a job-creating six-figure R&D grant from the UK’s national innovation agency Innovation UK.
Commercial demand for OVIC’s workspace was so strong that, in 2014, a fit-out programme to install 42 more offices took place, the first and second floors having become fully occupied within three years of conversion from open plan to partitioned offices.
OVIC has 35 resident companies, along with 15 virtual customers.