May 2011 Archives

So Jones Lang LaSalle and BNP Paribas Real Estate are sharing gold today after winning one of the most high profile office leasing contracts in the country.

The duo have been appointed by Aussie developer Lend Lease and London & Continental Railways to secure tenants for the 4m sq ft International Quarter Stratford City campus on the edge of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Other players in the running were Knight Frank, CB Richard Ellis, Drivers Jonas Deloitte and King Sturge.

An honourable mention has to go to Knight Frank who I gather got the bronze medal on this one.

CBRE were effectively cup tied due to other activity they have going on in the area creating a possible conflict of interests.

But JLL were always going to be a strong contender for this appointment as they have been giving background advice in the area for years, not to mention a long-running relationship they have with Lend Lease.

How it sits with JLL's role as Olympic Park Legacy Company adviser remains to be seen.

The OPLC has brought in a big hitter to oversee the appointment of operators at various venues around the Olympic park.

Peter Tudor is a great acquisition - coming to the legacy company after three years with Ticketmaster.

But it is perhaps his experience before that which is even more crucial.

The new Olympic Park Legacy Company Venues Director was general manager of Wembley Arena when it reopened in 2006 after a £36m refurbishment.

He was also chair of the National Arenas Association from 2002 to 2005.

A safe pair of hands then it would seem to find operators for the likes of the Aquatics Centre and the Multi-Use Arena after the 2012 Games...

At 6pm on Sunday West Ham United could be relegated from the Premier League.

Currently bottom of the league, if they lose to Wigan Athletic this weekend then their fate will be sealed.

In fact, they could even be down by 3pm tomorrow if Wolves win away at Sunderland.

Co-owner David Sullivan says the Upton Park club is in a "worse financial position than any other in the country". He predicted that relegation would mean the need to add up to £40m of loans to the club's current debt of around £80m.

But what does all this mean for the Hammers' proposed move to the 2012 Olympic Stadium.

Paul Mitchell, executive director of buildings at consultancy ARCADIS, worked as cost manager on the 80,000-seater main stadium.

He says that West Ham have insisted all along that their bid to take the stadium is predicated on a worst case scenario of relegation and that they believe the business case still stacks up.

Mitchell, who also worked on Arsenal's Emirates Stadium, says there is no evidence of West Ham waiting for potential relegation before deciding what to do next.

The club has put out an OJEU notice to appoint a contractor for the £100m job to transform the stadium after the 2012 Olympics into a multi-use venue.

The stadium will have a 60,000 capacity for football, 74,000 for athletics and around 90,000 for concerts. Works will include extending the existing roof and installing additional hospitality facilities.

The big question perhaps is whether West Ham has factored a further drop to League One into its business plan - something that could occur before work has even started on the stadium conversion after the Olympics...

Interesting to see the cost of the London 2012 Olympics construction project continues to fall.

The latest Olympics quarterly economic report from the DCMS reveals a further £35m has been shaved off the bill and the total construction cost now stands at £7.3bn.

At the end of March it was revealed that the £500m 80,000-seater main stadium came in on time and eventually under budget at a final cost of £486m.

As a result funding of up to £12.5m has been made available to the Greater London Authority to support its plans for the Games.

Today's economics report also revealed that another venue is now complete - the handball arena.

That means that with still more than a year to go, 83% of the Olympic venues and infrastructure is in place. Not bad at all.

Also, good news to see that an important deal was struck today regarding future uses at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company and University of East London have signed an agreement that will allow all connected with the Uni to take advantage of the park's fabulous facilities in the future.

As I understand it, a monthly meeting will now be held between OPLC and UEL project teams to map out options for encouraging community use of the park.

New images of the London 2012 Shooting venue - located in the grounds of Woolwich's historic Royal Artillery Barracks have been released by the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA).

Spectators will enter the venue with views of the world-famous military base - the longest continuous Georgian building façade in the UK - before taking their seats to watch the sporting action.

It is estimated that more than 104,000 spectators will watch the shooting competitions during the games.

Immediately after though, the venue will be dismantled as quickly as possible and the site returned to its original condition, after which it will be handed back to the Ministry of Defence.

Meanwhile, people have only one week from today to make a suggestion for a name for one of the five new neighbourhoods that will be built on the future Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park after the 2012 Games.

So far, the Olympic Park Legacy Company has received more than 1,200 entries with inspiration coming from historical uses of the area such as gunpowder mills and former factories as well as famous figures.

Names so far include Redgravia, Hoy Gateway, Templar Mills, Olympic Park Hill, Lavender Fields, Plastiside and The Rings.

To make a suggestion before next week's deadline visit www.legacycompany.co.uk.

The website features an interactive map with descriptions of how the areas will look, along with historical information, to help people get a feel for the new neighbourhoods.

Boris Johnson's proposed Mayoral Development Corporation to cover the Olympic Park will potentially be missing a trick if it doesn't widen its scope.

The likes of London First and the RICS have made this point to the Greater London Authority in a consultation on the plans for the new planning and regeneration body.

The proposed Olympic Park Legacy Corporation - which, if approved, will swallow up the duties of the existing Olympic Park Legacy Company from April 2012 - does include some important sites outside the current Olympic Park such as Stratford City.

But in 2005, when London put in its bid for the 2012 Olympics, it was based on the idea that the Games would bring about the transformation of east London as a whole and there were numerous government statements endorsing that pledge.

This was of course before the credit crunch and the economic collapse that followed.

The powers that be certainly deserve a pat on the back for keeping the Olympics project on track while private sector investment failed to materialise.

Money is obviously still in short supply, but this should not be a reason for the Mayoral Development Corporation to focus entirely on the Olympic Park and a few sites beyond.

This, in isolation, would not deliver on the pledge to transform the wider communities in east London.

The challenge has always been to sew the transformed Olympic Park together with the rest of east London in order to spread the benefit.

As it stands, the proposed scope of the MDC could merely serve to isolate what is of value in the Park.

We now have a new Enterprise Zone not far away in the Royal Docks in Newham which if added to what has already been achieved in Canary Wharf, O2, Stratford City, Stratford International etc, there is the potential to draw these together and coordinate wider regeneration as part of some sort of golden triangle - or whatever shape that creates.

The Mayor's proposals, as they stand, fail to do this.