I used to work in that building, it was cold and miserable and I won't be sorry to see it go! I'm now (at least for the next 2 weeks) in the building facing the park. Much better. I believe that the intention is to replace the engineering facilities that will be lost at Palmbourne when that area is repurposed for HS2 never coming to Stafford (or something like that?). The college currently uses a lot of units on the Palmbourne site and I think they only have 2 years left before having to rescind the leases, so want purpose built workshops for the mechanics/construction/electrical areas.
Some of this could be wrong, I'm not in the loop on this project as such, but it's what I heard.