A deal has been struck to redevelop East London’s massive Bishopsgate goods yard which has been derelict for almost half-a-century.

The deal by the Ballymore Group and Hammerson Properties comes after 12 months’ negotiations with Network Rail which owns the 10-acre site between Spitalfields and Shoreditch.

The goods yard—originally the 1861 terminal of the Eastern Counties Railway before Liverpool Street was built—has potential for 2,000 homes, offices, ‘start up’ enterprises, shops, leisure and a public open space.

Hammerson’s Andrew Hilston said: “This deal marks the next step in unlocking the regeneration of one of the of the last major undeveloped sites in the heart of ‘Tech City’.”

Proposals to redevelop the old goods yard after it was destroyed in a massive blaze in 1964, when a railway worker died, have been stalled for decades over what to do with the site that stretches across the borough boundary between Tower Hamlets and Hackney.

But a compromise was reached in the last few years through an ‘interim planning’ understanding by both local authorities to parcel off the land for different phases of development.

The only regeneration so far has been the extension of the East London Line from Whitechapel to Dalston, when the new Shoreditch High Street station opened two years ago.