November 2009 Archives

I've been a way for the past week but a quick update on the Olympics landscape this morning suggests there has been much chest-thumping and gnashing of teeth ahead of today's inspection visit from the International Olympics Committee.

My inbox is of course replete with ODA updates on its rapid progress in building out the media centre and the village and the DCMS on everything being still on time and budget.

In jarring contrast Sir Robin Wales this morning issued a press release outlining thinly veiled concerns he raised at a Newham council-organised symposium yesterday about just how much the ODA and Locog are really interested in "legacy" in east London.

A property industry figure with a deep interest in all things Olympics who will remain nameless has alerted me to the following, which I think points to the continued robustness of the British entrepreneurial spirit, or something.

The new Olympic Park Legacy Company has launched for business with the registered email address of name@legacycompany.co.uk. A quick game of 'whois' domain searching reveals that the LDA registered the name in April 2009, which makes sense. The LDA also registered londonlegacy.co.uk, so expect to see that somewhere soon.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company's remit may be extended to include the regeneration of the 900-acre Royal Docks and other key east London sites it seems.

Speaking at a London Assembly Economic Development, Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee review of the Olympic Legacy plans, Neale Coleman, the mayor's Olympics adviser said that there was a danger that the OPLC's current remit was "too narrow in scope" if the competing Boroughs were to bring forward an integrated redevelopment of east London post Games.

It all of course makes a deal of sense and has been suggested to me by property people as likely for some time.

So the Olympic Park Legacy Company Board has been announced and it's an eclectic mix, with only Sir Bob Kerslake and Lambert Smith Hampton's deputy chairman Philip Lewis particularly famililar to the UK property scene.
I've just spoken to one of the Board members and apparently the majority of them are all meeting for the first time this morning.
I won't mention any names but the Board member I spoke to was extremely excited despite a long interview process. Members were first interviewed at the beginning of July. I guess it took so long because of the key stakeholders - City Hall and central government - can both take a bit of time on such matters. Let's hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

Not for the first time Andrew Gilligan has been upsetting the government with a news report.
In Saturday's Telegraph he claimed to have unearthed an extra £2.7bn of "hidden" money invested out of the public purse into the Olympics which the government have failed to tell any one about.
Gilligan also suggested that most of this information had come from Freedom of Information requests to public bodies.
Slam dunk for Gilligan and his persistence you might think.

Westfield is planning to build a further 150,000 sq ft of shops at its already 1.5m sq ft Stratford City shopping centre next to the Olympics Park.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson and the ODA are seemingly happy for them to do it too, so it is clearly going to happen.

What Westfield wants to do is add mezzanine floors to its already consented retail blocks at M1, M2, M4, M5, M6 and M8 at the shopping centre.

Good to see the Queen getting stuck in down at the Olympic Park on Tuesday.

You can see her picking up a shovel and starting work on planting the first of 4,000 trees at the Queen Elizabeth Park here.

Let's hope the weather is better for the Games themselves.

Had a thoroughly interesting day at the Thames Gateway Forum at the O2 yesterday, although it has to be said that the main chat among the depleted delegates was about great progress on Greenwich Peninsula and the not so great progress at Silvertown Quays, rather than the Olympics.

Andrew Altman, chief executive of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, gave an upbeat presentation on the likely benefits of the Olympics for Stratford and the surrounding area.

BT Group Property on Saturday unveiled a massive TV screen on the top of its iconic BT Tower at 60 Cleveland Street, W1, to count down the 1,000 days to the start of the Games.

The screen, which wraps around the top of the tower at 167m above street level, comprises 177 separate panels, consisting of 177,000 pixels and 529,750 LEDS, to make up the information band. The band totals more than 280 sq m, has a circumference of 59m, and weighs 3.6 tonnes.