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I
t was billed as “the greatest show on earth”. And, by all
accounts, the LondonGames lived up to the hype. For
about a fortnight last month, that small, newly shiny part
of east London was the only place prettymuch anyone,
anywhere, wanted to be. But now that the dust has settled and
crowds dispersed, it begs the question: What next for the area?
Anyone who saw it before it become the Olympic Park
will know that it looked like your local industrial estate,
but with a century of drudgery layered on top. And it didn’t
smell particularly great either – locals even nicknamed it
‘Stinky Stratford’. Surrounding it were suburbs that... Well,
accordingNewhamBorough Council, the Olympic host
boroughs (Barking and Dagenham, Greenwich, Hackney,
Newham, Tower Hamlets andWalthamForest) represent
one of themost concentrated areas of deprivation in the UK.
So, when London found out that it would be hosting the
2012 Olympics, there was a blaze of optimism. The “legacy”
– that irritatingOlympic-speak – became a solemn vow
tomake east London lovable, andmillions were spent on
quangos and executives tomake it happen. The plan was
simple: flood the area with cash, developers will develop and
themiddle classes will arrive. Hey, presto – regeneration! So
contractors built nine sports venues, a 115m tower, Stratford
train station, the East London Tube line extension and the
Westfield Stratford City Shopping Centre.
But what reallymakes these Olympics different is that
the sports are just a temporary tenant in what is to become
a new residential neighbourhood. Up to 11,000 new homes
are planned for the site over the next two decades, with
6,800 recently given approval. The park will even have a
new postcode, E20 – previously reserved for
EastEnders
, as
fans of the UK’s TV soap will know. Eleven blocks of flats
that were built for athletes will now, post games, be renamed
East Village and divided into 1,379 social-housing flats and
1,439 private flats. The private portion was recently bought
by developer Qatari Diar Delancey (QDD), which has plans
for a further 2,000 homes on the Olympic Park.
The company claims to have a strong vision for the
future of the area. “The site was derelict before,” says Stuart
Corbyn, chairman of QDD’s Olympic development. “I’ve
seen a few photographs, and it was just a large wasteland
with shopping trolleys and clapped-out cars. There had been
marshalling yards there donkeys’ years ago and factories.
“It was a classic piece of industrial wasteland, but, after
the Olympics, it will be an attractive residential area and
there is a responsibility tomake sure this place works. That’s
a real challenge, but it’s not an insurmountable one. It’ll be
very exciting to be part of something with every prospect
of being as good a part of London as almost anywhere else
over the next 10, 20 or 30 years. It’ll need to integrate and it’ll
take time tomake sure that happens, but I think it has every
prospect of helping to improve this part of the East End.”
It sounds too good to be true, so is it? To try to predict
the future, it pays to look at the past. And the history of
Olympic legacies is, well, a somewhat chequered one. Take
Athens. Dozens of journalists have travelled there since
the Games’ closing ceremonies in 2004 to gawp at the now-
dusty venues. According to reports, 21 out of a total of 22
sites have been abandoned, the open-air swimming pool is
empty and squatters took over the volleyball complex. The
fundamental failure was that the Greek authorities had no
plan for themafter the Games; London’s Olympic Stadium
currently faces a similarly uncertain future.
Other recent Olympiads have faired better though. In
Beijing, the Olympics opened the country to the world
and venues are now tourist attractions. The Olympic Park
in Sydney struggled for a few years, but is now a thriving
suburb. Atlanta suffered a transport fiasco during the
Games, but the Olympic Stadiumbecame a baseball ground
and the athletes’ accommodation became student halls in a
successful regeneration of neglected suburbia, prompting
former Londonmayor Ken Livingstone to describe Atlanta
as amodel legacy.
It’s Barcelona, however, that is held up bymany as the
pinnacle of Olympic legacies. Twomiles of pristine beach
was created for the Games and the seafront is now thriving:
there are scores of restaurants, and a new port and venues
were built (though some of themare now fairly unused due
to their remoteness). Overall, the 1992 Games are credited
with transforming the city into one of Europe’s most popular
tourist destinations, with the only criticismbeing that the
city’s rise has priced out many of its long-term inhabitants.
In London too, it’s the impact on locals that presents the
biggest potential banana skin. Some have already protested
the loss of open space and historic buildings; others that of
homes and businesses. One of the latter group was Lance
Forman, owner of Forman’s Smokehouse, which had stood
for a century where the Stadium stands now. His business
was booted out under a compulsory purchase order and for
five years he fought in the courts for a satisfactory deal.
Number of international visitors to
inmillions per year
Number of UNESCOWorld
Heritage sites
Percentage of the British population
who live in London
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PROPERTY
The sitewas derelict before...
Generally, it was a classic piece
of industrial wasteland”