As ever a number of crucial decisions are brewing at the Olympics developments just now.
Firstly, speaking at the LDA's annual Board meeting on Tuesday morning Baroness Ford, the chair of the OPLC, said it expected to fairly imminently receive confirmation from government of the settlement it has to work with now that the LDAs' budget support has been removed.
Ford said: "We await with interest news from CLG as to what our capital project is to finish the project."
I'll be trying to keep a close eye on this clearly. Ford was elsewhere thankful to the LDA for its support and its previous work on the Olympic Park, and in particular thankful to them for their efforts during the "neverending" negotiations to transfer the Olympic Park to the OPLC without any debt attached.
An announcement on the three bidders for the Olympic Stadium will be made some time over the next few days I am led to believe too. It's hard to pick a winner just now as all seem to have their difficulties and their plus points. If I was a betting man I would have to still favour West Ham, given its unbending commitment to moving to the stadium and the backing of Newham and Sir Robin Wales - that will surely go a long way.
I also had a very interesting chat with Andrew Altman, chief executive of the Olympic Park Legacy Company earlier this week, about the various announcements made by Prime Minister David Cameron about creating a UK Silicon Valley between Shoreditch and the Olympic Park.
Altman quite rightly said it was a pretty good early win to have the Prime Minister turn up on the Park in support of the media centre and proposals to use it as accelerator space for hi-tech firms just a few weeks after seeking initial expressions of interest.
Despite all the talk of Googles and Facebooks and BT and Intel interest in the project however Altman was particularly excited about two elements.
One was the government's commitment to providing £200m of funding for technology centres across the UK.
He said the OPLC was bidding hard to bring an innovation centre to the Park, either within the Media Centre or elsewhere and confirmed that Cisco was talking about the options for this.
"You could see a floor or half a floor of the media centre given over to an innovation centre for new hi-tech businesses to use," Altman said.
He seems equally excited by Loughborough University's commitment to creating a sports research centre at the Park and suggested there were clear synergies with the innovation centre plans.
I think the Loughborough move is highly significant and I will be trying to write a bit more about that as soon as I can get anyone to talk to me about it in any great depth.
Anyway after talking to Altman I am becoming less cynical about the whole "Silicon Valley" in the east project - indeed I have written a few things about it all for Estates Gazette this week - I will publish that later this week.
Leave a comment
What a user pic? Get a Gravatar!