The benefits of the construction taking place in London for the 2012 Olympics will last long after the closing ceremony. Mark Caswell reports.
Log on to the London 2012 website and you’ll see a countdown mechanism reminding everyone that it’s a little over 1,100 days until the Olympic Games come to the city. Construction – if not all of the financing – remains ahead of schedule, and the International Olympic Committee was said to be impressed by progress during its most recent visit.
But in reality, a successful games will count for little if the regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley area of London does not continue once the eyes of the world have moved on.
Among the five promises made in the government’s Legacy Action Plan was a commitment to “transform the heart of East London”, and there is little doubt that the Olympic Park will change the landscape of the area. Even before construction of the venues had started there were immediate benefits – a total of 52 unsightly overhead electricity pylons that had long blighted the land were removed, to be replaced by underground tunnels carrying power lines to every corner of the park.
I recently took a tour of the works in progress. It’s impossible to overstate the sheer size of the project, with an area equivalent to 357 football pitches under development in what is currently Europe’s largest construction site. Getting workers around the site is a logistical challenge in itself – our tour bus manoeuvred its way around makeshift roads, sandwiched between heavy goods vehicles on their way to various parts of the project, and traversed the several rivers and canals in the park using Bailey Bridges (temporary structures normally used by the army, and strong enough to support tanks).
To reduce congestion, the developers have tried to create on-site manufacturing plants. The tour passed a concrete supplier that will eventually become the athletics warm-up track, as well as the “soil hospital”, which was used to wash millions of tonnes of contaminated earth on the site before it could be used. Hundreds of years of industrial and landfill use left three-quarters of the land with some form of contamination from materials including petrol, arsenic and lead, and all of this needed to be removed before construction could begin.
Work has now started on all of the “big five” venues – the Aquatics Centre, with its futuristic curved architecture that will welcome visitors inside the main entrance to the park; the Velopark, being built on a former landfill tip; the Olympic Village, which will house competitors and officials; the International Broadcast Centre and Main Press Centre; and the Olympic Stadium itself.
Even from the windows of the tour bus I could get a real feel for how far the stadium has come – eight sections of the roof are now in place, and the first of five bridges now connects this “island” site, which is surrounded by water on three sides, to the rest of the park. It seems a shame that the stadium will be partially dismantled after the Olympics – the capacity will be reduced from 80,000 to 25,000 – but the Olympic Delivery Authority is keen to point out that this reduction will ensure the sustainability of the venue as an athletics stadium in the long term. The Aquatics Centre will leave behind two 50-metre swimming pools and a diving pool, while the Velopark will be turned over for use by athletes and the community, with road cycling and mountain biking facilities added after the games.
Parkland
Sports facilities alone will not ensure a lasting legacy for the area. To this end, the site will feature one of the largest urban parks to be built in Europe for 150 years, connected to the Thames Estuary to the south and the Hertfordshire countryside to the north. The project includes the regeneration of more than 8km of waterways and the widening of the River Lea to protect against “one in one-hundred-year floods”.
There will also be a half-a-mile long London 2012 Gardens, which the tour guide described as a “mini Kew Gardens”, using only those trees, grasses and flowers that will be able to cope with climate change. Sustainable travel will also be encouraged, with several cycle and walking routes connecting the park to the wider London network.
Stratford City
To the east of the park, construction is well under way on Stratford City, a £4 billion development that will eventually include 465,000 sqm of office space, about 5,000 new houses and one of Europe’s largest shopping malls, Westfield Stratford City. Sandwiched between Stratford’s regional and international stations, the development will be the first thing most visitors see when they enter the park.
The structure of the £1.5 billion Westfield project was visible during the tour, with the centre due to open in 2011. When completed, there will be about 300 shops, including a 22,300 sqm John Lewis, an 18,600 sqm Marks and Spencer and a 3,000 sqm Waitrose. It is hoped the development will become one of the most important shopping districts in London, rivalling the West End, Knightsbridge and Westfield’s existing shopping centre in Hammersmith.
Transport links
By the end of this year, Stratford will have two major stations serving the area – Stratford Regional, with links to the Central and Jubilee underground lines and the Docklands Light Railway, and the forthcoming Stratford International, located on High Speed 1, the line used by Eurostar services to and from St Pancras.
This new terminal is structurally complete and receiving a final fit-out ahead of the introduction of high-speed domestic services between St Pancras and Kent later this year. The station will be crucial to the transport infrastructure of the games, both for international visitors and those using the seven-minute “Javelin” service from St Pancras, but once again its legacy will be of greater importance in the long term.
Besides providing direct access to the Stratford City development, Stratford International will also serve as the terminus for a further extension to the DLR, with links to Canary Wharf and London City airport. As a spokesman for the station put it, this will create “huge potential as an access point for business services”, providing business travellers in the area with a convenient departure point without the need to connect at St Pancras.
The station will be linked by a bridge to Stratford Regional, which is also receiving an upgrade ahead of the games. It is estimated that 60 per cent of all spectators travelling by rail, and 45 per cent of all those visiting the games, will arrive and depart from this station. As a result, £100 million of improvements are being made to treble its capacity. Work is expected to be finished by the end of next year, and the benefits will be felt long after 2012, with 83,000 travellers expected to use the stations each morning by 2016.
There remain many question marks over the final costs and financing of the 2012 games, but there can be little doubt the regeneration of a much-neglected area of East London can only bring benefits to communities and businesses in the area.
