Local Economy
Historically, employment was commonly connected to the railway and the canal. In the modern day, West Drayton tends to be more of a commuter town, owing to its proximity to the M25, M4, M40 and M3 motorways, Heathrow Airport and Stockley Business Park.
A new shopping complex is soon to be built in the town centre. An Ofcom-licensed community radio station, 91.8 Hayes FM, serves the area, as does the commercial station Time 106.6. The European broadcaster Viasat also has its studios and playout centre here.
Guoman Hotel Management (UK) Limited has its head office in the Thistle London Heathrow in West Drayton.
The Stockley Close Industrial Estate includes a British Midland International office. In July 1999 Sir Michael Bishop formally opened the British Midland Training Centre at Stockley Close. Other tenants in the estate include Almirall, BP, British Airways, HP Enterprise Services (originally Electronic Data Systems, or EDS), and Marks & Spencer. Waterside, the head office of British Airways, is in Harmondsworth, near West Drayton.
Read more about this topic: West Drayton
Famous quotes containing the words local and/or economy:
“To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self- congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.”
—Clifford Geertz (b. 1926)
“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)