The Olympic countdown proper began this week with the installation of the London 2012 clock in Trafalgar Square. That the clock stopped soon after – a “technical issue” said the manufacturer – needn’t detain us. Of more interest is the news that an offer for the freehold of much of the Olympic Park is imminent.
The £1bn bid being prepared by the Wellcome Trust turns on its head all that had been assumed about the Olympic legacy (see p38).
In exploratory talks with the Olympic Park Legacy Company, the charitable organisation has said it wants to buy the freehold of the stadium, the Aquatics Centre, the Athletes Village and the Media Centre in order to create a science and technology park.
On so many levels it’s a deal that fulfils the public sector’s ambitions for the park. It delivers a politically acceptable legacy for the trickier assets – not least the Media and Aquatics centres – and is in keeping with this government’s aspirations for the creation of a “tech city” in east London. Importantly, the trust has also pledged to maintain the City Hall and OPLC’s vision, trumpeted at MIPIM last week, for 8,000 mainly family houses at the park.
But it throws up problems, too. How will the offer affect bidding for the £500m Athletes Village and associated development plots, which the Olympic Delivery Authority is drawing up a shortlist for in the next few days? The Wellcome Trust is among the bidders and others would be entitled to feel that the trust is placing the ODA in an invidious position.
Of wider impact is the price. The village, the £240m Aquatics Centre, the £305m Media Centre and the £500m stadium all for £1bn? I’m sure you’re ahead of me on the likely headlines: “Government sells budget-busting Olympic Park on the cheap” will be among the more polite versions.
More peripheral is the question mark it places on the future of the OPLC – soon to be part of the Mayoral Development Corporation – itself. With no freehold to manage, it presumably has no future.
Others may well now wish to follow the Wellcome Trust by tabling their own bids. It’s a race with no clear-cut winner.
- “A bloody fool,” was how Sir Alan Sugar described business secretary Vince Cable at a Movers & Shakers breakfast earlier this month.
He was talking principally about Cable’s ill-advised disclosure that he was “going to war” with Rupert Murdoch at a time when he was set to rule on the takeover by Murdoch’s News Corporation of BSkyB. The indiscretion saw responsibility for the decision handed to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.
This week it became clear that Cable’s cock-up is causing property problems for the government.
Hunt’s department, Culture, Media and Sport, said in July it would be among the first to relocate to cheaper premises. However, initial plans to share space with the Department for International Development at Buckingham Palace Road were scuppered by Cable’s intervention. DCMS was forced to hire 55 civil servants when it took on responsibility for the News Corp ruling. And the newly enlarged department was too big for the space.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson and the Olympic Park Legacy Company are now understood to have approached the DCMS about the 294,555 sq ft of offices that form the press centre element of the Olympics Media Centre.
The DCMS is unlikely to make a decision until after the Olympics. However, ministers and civil servants have long resisted moves away from the Westminster bubble. Will the DCMS be any different?
Perhaps it won’t. But it should be. The DCMS is home to the Olympic Executive and has a responsibility to do all it can to sell Hackney as a well-connected business location. What better signal than to move there?
