(This story has been updated to credit the individual photographers).

Hong Kong investor Knight Dragon's 150,000-square-foot Design District in South East London, which launched 18 months ago as London's first permanent, purpose-built workspace for the creative industries, is now 94% leased.

While the plans for the district at Greenwich Peninsula, right by North Greenwich Underground station and the O2 concert venue, drew a fair amount of fanfare on opening, the team leasing it and managing it have been quietly getting on with business at the site, also a gateway to one of the capital's largest and most ambitious developments.

Knight Dragon and its equity partner the Mayor of London has tried to create a unique environment by developing 16 buildings designed by eight different architects to attract creative businesses. To that end Design District’s director Helen Arvanitakis says the community is now home to 1,800 “creatives”.

The site is right next to North Greenwich tube station, peppering the Thames-side site with a striking collection of modernist buildings each with a distinct style.

It is almost, but frustratingly not quite, complete. Two buildings are yet to be built, held up by wrangling over tunnels for the nearby Silvertown site.

The other 14 buildings are very much up and running, a success by any means, but particularly as they launched during a global pandemic. There are now 74 units, 70 of which are either leased or at heads-of-terms stage which equates to 94.59% occupancy, the team at Design District says proudly. That amounts to 97,639 square feet of leased space across the district, not including Bureau, the coworking space which is available to members and Design District tenants. At the centre of the district is Canteen, a food hall open to the general public and O2 visitors and enlivening the space.

There are 64 businesses on site, most of them with funky names and even funkier USPs. There are actually fewer businesses than spaces because some have more than one studio, for instance the companies Haberdashery and Clod Ensemble.

The district is a gateway to the £8.4 billion, 150-acre Greenwich Peninsula site – a giant former gasworks that has been the focus of various aspirations for development for 30 years. Most famously that included the Millennium Dome, the government's white elephant that is now the highly successful O2 entertainment venue.

Knight Dragon first got involved with the project as equity partner to then-owner Quintain in 2012. It later took on a development that will eventually house 45,000 people alongside a massive 11 million square foot workspace, cultural, entertainment and leisure quarter.

When the Design District launched in 2020 at the height of the pandemic lockdown, Knight Dragon announced a 12-month across-the-board rent reduction to "help relieve growing pressure on the sector and kickstart the capital’s creative recovery".

It offered a reduced rate of £5 per square feet for every creative business taking up tenancy in any space in its buildings.

That flexible attitude to leasing space and negotiations has been a hallmark of the development.

Typically, rents have ranged from £7 per square feet, up to around £45, depending on the workspace and the size and needs of the tenant, which have been reviewed regularly.

The Design District did have a leg-up on launch with the wider site home to some 5,000 residents, several successful venues, a new school, an art gallery and the first 1km section of The Tide, a 5km garden walkway. It also opened as home to neighbour Ravensbourne University London’s new Institute for Technology and Creativity, which occupies all of one of the buildings.

Alex Howard, the commercial lead at Design District, says the policy has been to be open with occupiers that some will simply pay more than others based on the type of business they are. "If you are spending all day making a mug that is not that commercially valuable, while if alternatively you are a web coder charging £1,000 per hour, the income profile is different and so we charge one more than the other. We review this as it goes along but it is always an open conversation. The creative industries really understand why this is fair."

At the coworking hub Bureau, the "very accessible entry point" is hot-desk membership at £125 per month plus VAT. Howard says this allows one-person bands to grow into larger space across the district on up to 10-year leases if needed. "There are examples of this such as the expanding companies On and Symterra."

"On has now leased an entire floor," Howard adds.

Arvanitakis says the creative industries have been among the most keen employers and businesses to get back into offices as lockdowns have ended. "Here there is an incentive to bring people back really as there are so many benefits to what is offered."

Arvanitakis says Knight Dragon is using a uniquely broad definition of creative industries based on that used by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport government department which includes heritage museums, colleges and even pharmaceutical companies.

"If there is a unifying aspect," she says, "it is the decision-makers often have a connection with South East London so they understand how easy it is to get here and don't have that problem with the tube and Greenwich."

Arvanitakis said the district is attracting tenants from traditional creative areas in the east such as Shoreditch and Hackney, as well as Lewisham and Peckham.

Belcor is advising on leasing the Barozzi Building alongside Strettons.

She adds it is not really the price that has proved popular with occupiers but the other companies whose expertise, and facilities, they can use.

"There is the talent pool with Ravensbourne nearby and the facilities here. There is a huge 3D printing hub for instance as well a large-scale professional photography studio, which occupiers are able to access."

Howard also points to the no-nonsense documents occupiers see when they sign for space as a fundamental reason why it is proving popular.

"We don't need to see financials particularly for smaller operations. And we don't need reams of legal documentation. It is a two-page document and that removes a huge amount of red tape and cost."

Arvanitakis says the creative industries sector understands and appreciates this approach. And the Design District's selling point is the diversity of its audience. "West London is a hub of fashion creatives, Soho is post-production, the east is tech for instance, but here there is a diversity in the approach we have that can't be found elsewhere."

The Design District has, from day one, been seen as a test bed for a pioneering approach to development and leasing. In 2019 Mayor of London Sadiq Khan agreed a lease and equity stake partnership with Knight Dragon to bring forward the development with rents pinned at an average affordable rate for small and medium businesses over the next 10 years.

Knight Dragon secured planning permission for the project as part of the revisions to the outline masterplan in 2015 and it has been delivered under the terms of the Land Disposal Agreement, a development agreement that governs how Knight Dragon is able to draw down land owned by the Greater London Authority on Greenwich Peninsula.