June 2009 Archives

Word reaches me that around 700 people have applied for the 10 remaining positions on the Olympics 2012 Legacy Delivery Vehicle.
Chairman Baroness Ford is sifting through the applications to advise her on building 12,000 homes and 1.7m sq ft of offices and industrial space as I write.
Last week EG, somewhat mischievously, suggested that Lambert Smith Hampton chief executive Philip Lewis was a good bet given his property and sport connections - he is also chairman of Sport England.
Other names thought to have a sporting chance are Hammerson non-executive David Edmonds and ex Grosvenor chief executive Jeremy Newsum.
They all sound plausible but who are the other 690 odd?

John Biggs (pictured), the Labour Party constituency member for City and East on the London Assembly, has picked up on my story earlier this month on the KPMG audit of the Olympic Legacy Directorate and used it to get an interesting response from Boris on the whole process.

In Mayoral Questions on the 17th of this month, Biggs wondered if it is right for KPMG to be looking in to a matter that the courts are already considering. He also questions the political motivation.

Biggs says: "You are doubtless being lobbied, as was your predecessor, and as have been many others (including myself), by business owners and former owners relocated to make way for the Olympics. It is reported in Estates Gazette that you have commissioned KPMG to audit the Olympic Legacy Directorate of the LDA to explore this further. While this may be perfectly in order do you not accept that, in such matters, processes of independent valuation, arbitration, compensation claims, and so on, often overseen by the courts, and often proceeding quite frustratingly slowly, are the proper means by which sums are agreed and that politicians should tread most carefully before involving themselves in such matters? What is the motivation behind and purpose of the audit and will you share its conclusions publicly?"
Boris answers by saying that the review is ongoing but confirms that the LDA has reforecast its budget to accommodate "additional spending commitments".

The revelation in The Times this morning that two senior members of staff at the London Development Agency have been suspended as part of the ongoing audit into a £100m shortfall in the 2012 Olympic accounts is something that has been doing the rounds for three weeks now.
I first put it to the LDA at the end of May as I was putting together a I June story on the KPMG audit that inspired the suspensions.
The audit is focusing on whether the LDA has agreed reasonable prices for land during its compulsory purchase programme for the east London Olympics Park site.

The two suspended staff members are Gareth Blacker, director of the Olympic Legacy Development Team, and an as yet unnamed accountant working in the team.

The agency refused to confirm or deny the story then, saying it would never comment on staff matters like this. The official line from Blacker's office since then has been that he has been on holiday. He was unable to attend an EG development conference two weeks' ago because of "tube problems", which is of course highly believable.
I think the LDA could have played this differently.

It's more likely that an Englishman will win Wimbledon this year than that the Olympic Delivery Authority Planning Decisions team will tonight throw out the Olympic Delivery Authority's own revised plans for the London 2012 Games' most divisive development - the £355m media centre.

The designs are a reworking by Allies & Morrison following a storm of criticism from CABE, the GLA, ELBA and Hackney and principally seek to overcome concerns about poor design and a lack of "legacy" thinking.

You can judge for yourself here, as I have downloaded copies of the artists' impressions and put them on EGi and on the blog.

This week I will be following ongoing compensation negotiations between the LDA and landowners relocated to make way for the Olympics Park as there are a number of interesting matters coming to a head.

One issue where there can be no negotiation however is the issue of values in a fluctuating market.

There has been a lot of speculation and misinformation about the nature of the private sector financing deal secured for the affordable housing Olympics Village, so it's good to see the deal done and the actual details fleshed out today.

In fact the deal is pretty much as EGi initially reported it when we broke the story back in April.

The Triathlon Homes investment of £268.7m into the Village includes £63.5m of lending from Barclays Commercial Bank and £95.2m of lending from the European Investment Bank.

Sources are telling me that the government is days/minutes away from announcing it has finalised the £255m loan from the European Investment Bank and Barclays to finance the affordable housing element of the Athlete's Village.

The deal was  at the beginning of April.

Expect something ministerial this week I am told confirming that around £268m will come from the European Investment Bank-led consortium and the Homes and Communities Agency and a in a presale deal.

Two stories I have been following on the blog and EGi have surface elsewhere this weekend.
Firstly, The Observer has picked up on the KPMG audit of the LDA's Olympic legacy.
The paper writes that the audit has found a shortfall of £60m for the fund set aside for payments for landowners forced to relocate to make way for the Olympics Park.
That's certainly the figure I first heard when I wrote about the audit back at the beginning of June.
The Observer writes that this shortfall could lead to vital infrastructure spending being delayed or even scrapped.
The LDA has denied this to me this morning, saying that its £1.1bn land budget has not changed and all necessary cost cutting measures have already been instigated.

Not totally sure what to make of Building's front page today, which is headed "Olympic bosses to rethink 10,000-home legacy plan".

On the one hand, it has always been clear that the new Olympic Legacy Vehicle was going to review the LDA's initial masterplan for development of the Olympic Park post-Games.

The EDAW, Allies and Morrison and KCAP masterplan was always an outline plan proposing anything between 6,000 and 12,000 homes and the detail was always going to be fleshed out reacting to market conditions.

The ODA's special Olympic blogs are always worth a read if you are looking for interesting snippets on the project.

I was amused to note that Jonathan Edwards' latest update reveals a problem for the Olympic Village builders I had not heard mentioned before.

Given the amount of athletes turning up who will be giants - the rowers and basketball players and so on - lots of thought is apparently going into making sure enough extra large beds can be accommodated in the village.

I think the only fair thing to do would be to make one of the 11 residential blocks a special giant's complex with super-size versions of everything.

I've been away from the office for the opening part of this week so apologies if you have seen and digested all of this already ...

But the mayor's office and the ODA have published a raft of new pictures and video walk throughs of the Olympic Village and Park - both as it is currently and how it will be.

These regular picture updates would be a disaster if nothing was happening - in fact I'm sure we would not be getting them if there was nothing happening - so it's always encouraging to receive them.

Just a note to say that the Commission for Architect and the Built Environment (CABE) has come out and said what I have already being suggesting in blogs - that the ODA and Allies & Morrisons' revisions to the plans for the 2012 media centre are finding favour with previous critics.
CABE, which has slated the original designs as "extremely weak" and having the potential to blight the Olympic legacy, now says the designs for the international broadcast centre show a "more rigorous and considered facade strategy" and the main press centre's external detailing showed "promise".

The mayor, while not falling in rivers in Lewisham (I kid you not), has published a legal document ratifying the formation of the Olympic Park Legacy Company.

The document outlines a list of objectives that the vehicle must meet as well as flagging up a number of outstanding issues that need still need to be resolved, the most complex of which will undoubtedly be negotiations to transfer the LDA's Olympics land over to the vehicle.

The Founder Members will be the mayor and whoever the secretary of state for Communities and Local Government and the Minister for the Olympics are by the time the vehicle is finally signed off.

With reference to the LDA land ....

The latest Olympic Borough to launch its bid to have a bit of 2012 Olympics Gold sprinkled over its retail and business core is Tower Hamlets.

The Borough today formally launched its High Street 2012 Historic Buildings Conservation Scheme via the Official Journal of the European Union.

Tower Hamlets is seeking an architect/project management team able to use the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as a "catalyst for regeneration along the A11/A118 in East London, from Aldgate in Tower Hamlets to Stratford in Newham".

  Spoke to Liam Kane, chief executive of the East London Business Alliance (ELBA), who said that, following the criticism from many sides of the designs for the 2012 media centre, the ODA appeared to be listening and that revised designs from Allies & Morrison are likely to be much more acceptable to all concerned.

Kane said all should become clear soon. I understand that is likely to mean major amendments to the exterior appearance of the complex and adjustments to the interior to make it more suitable for broadcast companies.

Will update as more details emerge.