A Japanese telecoms firm is buying a giant mixed-use east London campus where a major data centre could be built.

KDDI bought the 1.1M SF Inventory Estate in Docklands from LaSalle Investment Management and Trilogy Real Estate for about £250M, Green Street News reported. The scheme was previously known as Republic.

KDDI is the parent company of Telehouse, which owns data centre operations neighbouring the scheme.

The joint venture put the asset up for sale in autumn, with Knight Frank and Kauffmans advising on the disposal.

Inventory Estate comprises two office buildings totaling 483K SF primarily let to education tenants and bringing in £16M of income.

There is also planning consent in place for a 376K SF data centre on the campus, Green Street said. That project accounts for 10% of London’s pipeline of data centre developments with both power secured and planning consent.

There is a separate planning consent in place for a 36-storey student accommodation tower that would comprise 716 flats and another 30-storey tower comprising 150 build-to-rent apartments.

If fully developed the campus could have an end value of £1.5B.

The scheme is on the edge of a cluster of data centres in east London, which sits atop a major fibre connection point.

LaSalle and Trilogy bought the campus from Criterion Capital in 2015 for £170M, a 3.9% yield, and repositioned it from offices leased to the local authority to an education-led campus.