A new report into the 2012 Olympic stadium has branded plans for the project as “flawed” and has attacked the initial insistence of Olympic chiefs that the stadium be converted into an athletics arena after the games as a “missed opportunity”.
The criticisms come in a new report by the London Assembly’s Economic Development, Culture, Sport and Tourism (EDCST) Committee which cautions that only a major football or rugby club will be able to generate sufficient levels of regular attendance to ensure the stadium is self-sufficient and provides employment post 2012.
AMs say the original plan “put the interests of elite athletes ahead of local regeneration”. The Olympic Board is now considering a wider range of tenants for the site.
Committee Chair Len Duvall said: “The Olympic Board made the wrong decision when opting for an athletics legacy and that decision could have serious consequences for the OPLC and for whoever ultimately takes over the stadium.
“Put simply, an elite 25,000 seat athletics stadium is not, and was never going to be, in the long term interests of the East End or of the taxpayer.”
AMs have also criticised the design of the Olympic media centre and say they have received complaints about “low ceilings, the roof being too weak to support rigging equipment and the lack of central heating”.
The committee have also warned that attracting tenants to the centre after the games will require additional money to be spent on converting the buildings and upgrading transport links.
The report, Legacy United?, will be presented to the Committee for formal approval on October 19th.
Damian Hockney says
When Peter Hulme-Cross and I were on the London Assembly, we said all this when we alone opposed the bid, on the basis that the information provided was flawed and frankly false in the case of financials. Time after time at public meetings, we made clear what the costs really would be and that all the Colossus stadiums had had a rather chequered future after the last firework had fizzled out. Interestingly we were condemned as “extremists” by all parties for saying that the Olympics would cost “at least 10 billion when the figure given was “possibly break even! We pointed out the weed strewn wreck that was Athens (already), the major environmental damage of the rowing area and the failures of even Games propagandised as “successes”. The real problem is lack of oversight – of course the London Assembly was denied all the financial information, and Parliament was the place where it was “scrutinised”. And of course Parliament was denied a lot as well. Welcome to the new world of “oversight” and “holding to account” in place of government and decision making and facts.