London’s Olympic legacy was the subject of Estates Gazette’s third MIPIM round table
Is the Olympic delivery project living up to expectations?
Hugh Robertson It’s very important, when you look at it, to remember where we started at the beginning of this project. Back in 2002-03, when we bid for the Olympics, we’d just been through Wembley, the Dome, and the national embarrassment of winning a World Athletics Championship and then having to hand it back to the International Athletics Federation because we couldn’t build a stadium at Picketts Lock.
If you look at that as the backdrop, to be in the position we are now, it’s a remarkable achievement. And if you wanted to understand the quantum of that, just look at the World Athletics Championship bid last year, where, because of what we’d achieved with London 2012, we were able to knock over a bid from the Qataris simply because we’re now trusted to deliver what we promise. I think that is an incredibly powerful legacy.
Then look at the three main parts of an Olympic cycle: the construction, the operations and the legacy.
In construction terms, this is the largest construction project anywhere in Europe. Somebody told me rather tritely that it’s the equivalent of building two Heathrow Terminal 5s in half the time. Operationally, it’s the largest logistical operation a country undertakes outside a major war. You’ve probably got somewhere between 120 and 150 heads of state in London on or around 27 July.
In security terms, you’re dealing with a Wimbledon Championship, two FA Cup finals and a G20 each day, every day, for 16 consecutive days.
So the scale of this challenge is enormous. And, in legacy terms, we’re trying to do something that no other host city has ever done before.
The mistake the Australians made in Sydney in 2000 was to have the Games and then to pull the shutters down pretty quickly afterwards. I always say to people, London 2012 is not the end of the story; it’s the start of a new chapter. You’ll only be able to judge how many more people we get playing sports in this country, the answer to the Singapore pledge, probably about five or six years afterwards.
You’ll only be able to judge the effect that this has had on the redevelopment of the area around Stratford, probably a decade after it’s taken place. This is very long-term stuff. The crucial thing is that we recognise this is the start of a new opportunity and make the most of it.
What is the timetable for delivering legacy after the Games?
Baroness Ford We’re exactly where we expected to be at this point. We are delighted that the venues have either been let or, in the case of the Olympic Village, courtesy of the ODA, sold, and sold in a very sustainable way.
Over the course of the next three months, we hope to finalise and settle the stadium and the broadcast centre [arrangements], so I’m really hoping for a clean sweep before the Games.
LOCOG are in the process of fitting out the venues for the Games now, but then, after the Games, we must remember the Park will become a construction site again for about 15 to 18 months as we take the Olympic overlay off and we resize the Park, which has been super-sized for the Games. The North Park will reopen around the early summer of July 2013, so quite quickly after the Games, but the whole Park will reopen in 2014, when the stadium is finished, the aquatic centre is refitted, and so on. So, there is still quite a lot of work to do afterwards, but we’ll get it done promptly.
From 1 April, the Legacy Company becomes a development corporation, so, in addition to owning the land and stewarding the land on behalf of the mayor of London, we will also be our own planning authority, and that was a very deliberate step taken so that we could provide certainty to the development community over a long period.
This will be a 20-year build out.
How quickly can a community around the Park be created?
Dominic Grace It’s incredible what can be done with a deadline, isn’t it? I think we would all hope that some momentum can be kept up and there isn’t just a collective sigh of relief post-Olympics.
I started my life down in the docklands 20-plus years ago and one was forever selling the Docklands Light Railway and the Jubilee Line extension. In Stratford, transport infrastructure is all there already, and we’ve fast-tracked a lot of the other social infrastructure because of the Olympics. It ticks so many of the boxes that anyone, who wants to buy or, indeed, rent a home, would want out of a London home and it’s all going to be there.
Let’s use what’s happened to date as momentum to deliver a lot more because, in terms of infrastructure, I’d say Stratford now delivers everything one could want for a successful community: schools, jobs, tremendous transport and, of course, the parks, so let’s make the most of it as soon as possible. You’re not selling the future; it’s there for real in 2014.
How do you convince office occupiers to locate themselves in and around the Park?
Kevin Chapman We get hold of our site, the International Quarter, in March next year. We’re getting ready so that we can be in a position to start construction, as soon as we can, with our first pre-let. We aim to bring workers onto the site from the beginning of 2015, and that is very much our target.
We have to take that next step with our office occupiers to convince them that Stratford is the respectable office location that it will be.
That’s a very exciting journey that we’re on at the moment, talking to a lot of occupiers, in, interestingly, Canary Wharf, as well as the City and in the West End.
No question, in the next three or four months, we’re looking to see a shift in the perception of Stratford.
The robustness of the transport is a big selling point; there’s no doubt about that. But also, we’ve found interest from the City, certainly among those clustered around Liverpool Street, because most of the staff will come through Stratford already. But we’ve picked them up from all over.
Crossrail coming in in 2018 has opened up the west side of London for us.
A lot of the occupiers we talk to, they’re quite surprised to see that the office element is sat right in the centre of the Park, so it sits between Westfield and the stadium in the orbit.
That is a really clever piece of planning because, if you leave it at the heart, once the jobs come, many thousands of workers will be going through the shopping centre, so you need that heart to complement everything else that’s around there.
