Oakwood Park Business Centre, located just outside of Harrogate, is the latest business park to be awarded a Smart Park plaque by NYnet Ltd. Alan Cryer, the owner of the park, knew it was vital to improve his telecommunications offering to attract tenants to his Centre which comprises 19,000sq ft office and showroom space set in stunning landscaped grounds near Ripley.
The Smart Parks project was set up by a partnership between NYnet and York & North Yorkshire Ltd, to demonstrate the economic advantage to the region of offering high-speed, next generation broadband to tenants on business parks, usually only found in city centres. To date the initiative has connected five business parks across the region with tenants taking advantage of the benefits of high speed broadband.
Alan Cryer, Oakwood Business Park owner is presented with his Smart Park plaque by Julie Burton, NYnet’s Marketing, Community & Economic Development Executive
Alan Cryer stated:
When I heard about the Smart Park initiative, I immediately seized the opportunity to bring high speed fibre optic broadband to Oakwood Park as I could see the enormous potential for the park and its tenants. With more and more businesses now relying on decent broadband connections to operate their daily business functions such as uploading and sharing large data files, utilising IP telephony and video conferencing services as well as the increase in use of Cloud services, I knew that Oakwood Park would need to be able to offer this type of connection to stay competitive with office spaces located in the centre of Harrogate.
One of Oakwood Parks original tenants, Take That, rely heavily on a high speed broadband connection.
Matthew Swift, Technical Manager for Take That said:
Our entire business is online and therefore having access to a reliable internet connection is crucial. When we arrived at Oakwood Park we were happy with the initial bonded ADSL broadband the park could offer, however its speed restricted how we could use it. For example uploading and downloading large files would saturate the connection and take a considerable amount of time to complete; because of this such tasks had to be scheduled outside working hours. Now that we have access to a more robust and reliable high speed fibre optic connection these tasks can be run on demand without any impact on performance for other internet users. As our company expands and with it the demand on the connection, it’s also reassuring to know we can easily increase the bandwidth to grow with us.
Another benefit from the Smart Park initiative has been that Oakwood Park have been able to connect surrounding businesses with high speed broadband via wireless technology. Hob Green Hotel, a country house in neighbouring Markington, now enjoys high speed broadband and can operate its business more efficiently and offer wifi services to its guests, thanks to Oakwood Park. Another business, Patricia Dawson Clothes will also be connected shortly, greatly improving their ability to operate online.
Since the fibre has been installed the park has seen an increase in enquiries for business space. Alan continues, “with the recent success in attracting quality tenants, we are now able to continue with our plans for growth and are in the process of converting another building at the park which will cater for start up and small and medium size enterprises. The development will expand the floor space by a further 2000sq ft with units of around 200sq ft and upwards. This will be available in the Spring next year”.
To find out more about office space available at Oakwood Park Business Centre contact Alan at alan@oakwoodparkbc.co.uk or visit www.oakwoodparkbc.co.uk
