Two significant Olympics stories to update on this morning. The West Ham FC website has helpfully pointed out that the formal process of marketing the Olympic stadium post-Games is about to begin, something that eurosport has picked up on.
While OPLC has yet to release a statement but it will be telling interested parties that the stadium will be offered on a leasehold basis after finalising the soft marketing exercise which began in April.
I don't think there will be too many surprises. Around three parties are serious bidders with West Ham and AEG the most likely winners, perhaps together (certainly if West Ham and Newham get their way). I don't think Tottenham are going to be among those bidding, but of course stranger things have happened - apparently Maradona wants to manage Aston Villa because he loves the English countryside ...
In other news, as I have written before there is to be a central London based centre for journalists covering the Olympic Games. Today Boris unveiled the location.
The media centre will be located at the One Great George Street conference centre, just off Parliament Square.
The centre will have 250 workspaces, a 200-capacity press conference room, live broadcasting facilities and additional space for photographers.
It does beg the question of just how many journalists are going to be in town and what exactly are they all doing (although I won't be asking this too deeply clearly)? There is after all a 1m sq ft media centre being built in Hackney for "accredited" journalists and I am reliably assured that there will be more unaccredited ones then accredited ones when it all kicks off.
You have to wonder about the location. I think there will be a few slightly miffed property developers trying to get significant regeneration schemes off the ground in the capital wondering why they didn't get the gig.
As a slightly related aside I had an interesting breakfast meeting with Irvine Sellar, the man behind the Shard in London Bridge, this morning. He is not particularly eyeing these opportunities but he did say that by 2012 the Shard will have completed just in time to be an iconic building that as a nice backdrop is set to be beamed to the 6bn or so viewers who will be tuning into the Games. Now that's a good bit of timing marketing wise.
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