Features

Get set for 2012

29 Oct 2010 by AndrewGough

With the countdown on for London’s Olympics, Tom Otley reports on the transformation taking place in Stratford and the long-term legacy for the UK

The next time you have half a day to spare in the capital, instead of taking in a museum, wandering through its parks or hitting the shops, take the tube to Stratford and see how London’s plans for the Olympics are fast taking shape.

At the weekend, there are free bus tours of the Olympic site but, assuming that it’s a weekday, a leisurely walk around Stratford would give some sense of the scale of construction going on and the benefits it will bring to this part of the metropolis.

As with many large cities, London has its divisions – north and south of the river being most notable, but also the one between east and west. Although property values across the capital have risen in the past two decades, the east is still a much less expensive place to live in than the west, and the swathes of upmarket riverside apartments in converted warehouses along the Thames and the financial centre of Canary Wharf only highlight the divide.

Stratford and the Lea Valley were chosen for the Olympics not only because East London needs regeneration but also because there was a lot of empty derelict land there. And with the property prices that exist in London, that speaks volumes. It needed something like the Olympics to kick-start this kind of rebirth.

It’s now only 20 months until the Games begin on July 27, 2012, and if that seemed like a comfortable deadline, the experience of Delhi and last month’s Commonwealth Games surely gives pause for thought. At the end of September, the widely respected chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), David Higgins, announced he was leaving to become CEO at Network Rail. Higgins had ensured that the Olympics had remained within its budget of £8.1 billion, using experience gained working on Sydney 2000. His successor is ODA finance director Dennis Hone, who is now charged with the care of more than 200 nations taking part in 300 events in front of a potential global audience of four billion.

As with all Olympics, there is much talk of the legacy, which is really a way of justifying the astonishing cost of staging the event. If you visit Stratford, you can see where part of the money is being spent – it is currently Europe’s biggest construction site, and one of the largest regeneration projects in British history. More than 200 buildings had to be demolished at the 2.5 sq km Olympic Park and, although certain vantage points around the project provide a view of the progress being made, it is protective hoardings that will be your main impressions right now.

The mission is under way to involve Londoners in this “spendathon”. As the two-year mark passed, a campaign was launched to find up to 70,000 volunteers, or “London 2012 Games Makers”, as they will be known. From doctors, anti-doping personnel and scoreboard operators to ticket checkers and help-desk staff, all will be offering their services free of charge. Residents can also volunteer to be among the 8,000 London Ambassadors, “to help the millions of visitors who will travel to London for the Games to get around and enjoy a truly memorable stay in the capital”.

Involvement is vital for the event to be considered a success. The chairman of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG), Lord Sebastian Coe, made a direct appeal: “How will you spend the summer of 2012? Whether it’s buying a ticket, becoming a volunteer or being part of our education or culture programmes, there are hundreds of ways you can get involved.” Meanwhile, Hugh Robertson, minister for sport and the Olympics, reports that LOCOG has attracted “an unprecedented level” of commercial sponsorship.

It hasn’t been plain sailing, however. The ODA first had to abandon a £1 billion deal with a private developer for the Olympic Village complex, where the 17,000 athletes will be housed. Instead it is funding it from its own budget and will then go back to the private sector in the hope of recouping the cost. The plan is for the development to be converted into permanent housing after the Games, although at the time of going to press no deal had been signed.

The investment isn’t just in Stratford – Visit London says that in the next two years, in excess of £11 billion will be invested in projects directly benefiting visitors to the capital, including everything from new hotels and upgraded transport links to community projects and small business initiatives.

Still, there’s no doubt the investment is being concentrated in the south-east. The Financial Times reported in October: “Companies based in London have won more than £2.7 billion of contracts awarded to create venues and infrastructure – over half the total £5.1 billion so far spent by the ODA – with south-east companies gaining contracts worth £805 million and those in eastern England £719 million. In contrast, companies in north-east and south-west England have clinched £9 million each, while businesses in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined have netted £43 million.”

This wasn’t how the spending was supposed to be distributed, with Coe promising back in 2005 that the Olympics would “provide a unique opportunity for businesses of all shapes and sizes across the UK”.

So, will it work out? We British do a fine line in deprecation, but whereas there would normally be a widespread certainty that things will go wrong – projects such as the Millennium Dome, the British Library and the opening of Heathrow T5 not having done much to inspire confidence – this time there is a feeling that it must succeed. As others have put it, “if Greece could do it, we can” – although the observation is often backed up with, “but it bankrupted them…”.

The issue of money looms large. The countdown to the Games comes as the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has announced £40 billion in government cutbacks, while The Times has reported concerns over funding. Yet it’s not the first time London has hosted the Olympics – it did so in 1908 and 1948, the post-war Games now being held up as a possible model for austerity.

The event is on budget, despite the cost of the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium being revised from £280 million to £496 million, and the 17,500-seater Aquatics Centre from £74 million to £215 million. Whether this is money wisely spent is another matter. As The Economist put it recently: “By combining the games with a regeneration project, Britain has added to the cost of both… Building an 80,000-seat stadium for half a billion pounds then scaling it back after a few weeks’ use seems close to madness.”

Yet without the Olympics, it would seem doubtful that the funding would have come to Stratford at all, certainly not in today’s economic climate. Whether the Olympics are ultimately a success – creating “the legacy” that many speak of – will be difficult to judge, even when looking back at previous Games. The UK Parliamentary Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport pointed out that the Atlanta Games in 1984 cost £1.5 billion, Barcelona’s in 1992 cost £8.1 billion and Sydney’s in 2000 about £2.5 billion, with the final cost of Athens’ 2004 Games being £8 billion. London’s will be above all of these, but then regeneration is a big part of the cost and has also attracted private investment.

The site is to be home to Stratford City, a 73-hectare shopping centre from Australian developer Westfield Group, also behind the huge, upmarket mall in White City on the other side of town. The plans for Stratford City were there before the Olympics were announced, but have been accelerated since.

So for now, the focus is on fulfilling predictions. Olympic Delivery Authority chairman John Armitt says: “The venues and infrastructure needed for the Games and its legacy are on schedule and within budget. The venues will be ready next summer – a year ahead of the Games – to allow time for test events.”

Beyond that, the tourists expected are forecast to bring in an additional £2.1 billion, 5,000 new homes are to be built and a total of £10 billion in revenue is expected for the British economy as a whole – meaning its effects should be felt not only in Stratford but throughout the country

2012 in numbers

•    26 Olympic sports in 34 venues
•    20 paralympic events in 21 venues
•    17,000 athletes
•    205 nations represented
•    More than nine million tickets
•    Global audience of four billion
•    20,000 press and media
•    34 commercial sponsors
•    36 licensees manufacturing more than 10,000 individual pieces of merchandise

The venues

IN THE OLYMPIC PARK

OLYMPIC STADIUM – 80,000-seat facility, will host the athletics and opening and closing ceremonies

AQUATICS CENTRE – new 17,500-capacity venue that will host diving, swimming, synchronised swimming and pentathlon

VELODROME – new 6,000-seat track cycling venue

ETON MANOR – new 10,500-seat venue on the site of the old Eton Manor Sports Club. It will be used for wheelchair tennis during the Games and community sports afterwards

HOCKEY CENTRE – temporary 16,000-seat venue for paralympic five-a-side and seven-a-side football as well as hockey. It will move to Eton Manor afterwards

HANDBALL ARENA – new 7,000-capacity facility, will also host goalball and pentathlon fencing

BASKETBALL ARENA – With a 12,000 capacity, this is one of the largest temporary Olympic venues ever built – it will host basketball, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby and the final stages of the handball event

WATER POLO ARENA – temporary 5,000-seat venue adjacent to the Aquatics Centre

BMX CIRCUIT – a temporary 6,000-seat venue that will comprise part of a new Velopark after the Games

ELSEWHERE

LORD’S CRICKET GROUND – the archery event will happen here
HORSE GUARDS PARADE – a temporary 15,000-capacity arena will be set up for beach volleyball

EARLS COURT – volleyball

ETON DORNEY – near Windsor Castle, will host the rowing and canoe sprint

EXCEL – boxing, fencing, judo, table tennis, taekwondo, weight lifting, wrestling, boccia, paralympic power lifting, volleyball (sitting) and wheelchair fencing

GREENWICH PARK – equestrian and pentathlon

HADLEIGH FARM, ESSEX – mountain biking

HYDE PARK – triathlon, marathon and swimming

LEE VALLEY WHITE WATER CENTRE – canoe slalom

NORTH GREENWICH ARENA – artistic gymnastics, trampolining, basketball, and wheelchair basketball

ROYAL ARTILLERY BARRACKS – shooting and paralympic archery

WEMBLEY ARENA – the badminton and rhythmic gymnastics competitions will take place here

WEMBLEY STADIUM – will host the finals of the men and women’s football. Games will also be played at Old Trafford in Manchester, Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, St James’ Park in Newcastle, Glasgow’s Hampden Park and the City of Coventry Stadium

WEYMOUTH BAY AND PORTLAND HARBOUR – sailing

WIMBLEDON – tennis