The view from Westfield Stratford City

Last month saw the completion of the construction phase of one of the UK’s largest regeneration schemes, east London’s £1.45 billion Westfield Stratford City. On a recent tour of the shopping centre’s John Lewis anchor store, managing director Noel Saunders was surprisingly candid about his company’s goals: “We’re retailers, and we’re a business and we’re here to make money,” he said.

Yet Saunders is well aware that London Borough of Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales will do his upmost not to allow the development, which sits on the edge of the Olympic Park, to become just another concrete shrine to consumerism - even one that includes a 6,000sq metre casino and a 14-screen all-digital cinema. Wales wants jobs, and last month said the Government was “walking away” from its legacy goals on boosting local employment.

'We are a local shop, and with that will be local jobs'
Noel Saunders, managing director of Westfield Stratford City's John Lewis

Some time ago a taskforce established by mayoral economic body the London Development Agency set a target to use the Games to cut London worklessness by 70,000. John Lewis' Saunders says his store, which looks to open on schedule on 13 September, can help put a dent into that figure.

“We are a local shop, and with that will be local jobs,” he says as we walk past the frontage of a store marked ‘Jamie’s Italian’. “On offer will be 750 jobs, with 80 per cent ring-fenced for local people, and 400 for the long-term unemployed residents of Newham.

“John Lewis will be investing £35 million. But it’s not just about the investment – there’s a halo effect as well, in terms of commercial developments, housing and infrastructure. If you’re thinking of buying a new home in an area that’s being regenerated, this is a great place to invest. Five years ago it might not have been the first place on your list – now, it’s very much on the list.”

Wales will no doubt be hoping that the halo effect lasts long into the future.

Watch a slideshow of Westfield Stratford City images

Anish Kapoor Olympic sculpture captured in new time-lapse footage

New time-lapse footage released last week by the Olympic Park Legacy Company shows the construction of the spiralling ArcelorMittal Orbit in east London's Olympic Park, which when completed will be become the tallest sculpture in the UK at 114.5 metres.

Download footage of the Orbit being constructed (MP4)

The Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond-designed ArcelorMittal Orbit will be owned by the OPLC, which is currently appointing an operator for the venue. Organisers say the attraction could reap up to £10 million each year, with a large proportion being ploughed back into regeneration of the area.

A spokesman for the OPLC said that there was no "finite lifespan" for the body, but that whatever happens, the Orbit would remain in public hands.

The Olympic Delivery Authority backed plans for the sculpture last August after taking into account concerns by the Government’s design watchdog, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe).

Olympic media centre: anything is possible

While the precise regeneration objectives of the 2012 Olympic Games are bounced about, bricks and mortar continue to be laid.

This morning I donned a high visibility jacket and hard hat to check out progress on the broadcast and press centres, two adjacent buildings that lie in the Olympic Park’s north-west district and that together create 91,000sq metres of potential office space.

Our guide was Andrew Altman, chief executive of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, the firm in charge of legacy delivery.

The trip was interestingly timed, coinciding with a critical report from the London Assembly committee that said three years in securing a legacy had been wasted because of the original insistence of the Olympic Board on an athletics-led future for the stadium. The Olympic Board is made up of the chair of the British Olympic Association, the chair of the London Organising Committee for Olympic Games, the mayor of London and the lead government minister responsible for the Games.

And while the media centres are still months away from completion, the report talks of demolishing them if the OPLC cannot find a taker.

Unsurprisingly, Altman was keen to talk up the media centres' prospects ahead of market testing on future use, calling the site - he likened it to a "campus" - "a great opportunity", citing the local amenities and its flexibility (the broadcast centre can be split into four parts).

The OPLC itself says it is committed to turning the two centres into a "long-term centre for employment.

"There has been early interest in the legacy use of the buildings from a range of sectors including media, creative, retail, education, sports activity, culture and office use," it says.

"Anything is possible," one spokeswoman added.

Altman concedes that for this to happen, improvements to transport infrastructure – another criticism in the London Assembly report - would have to be made. He revealed that the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation is in talks with the London Borough of Hackney over developing near-by Hackney Wick station.

As for those regeneration objectives, Altman said we can expect the long-delayed legacy masterplan in autumn. And in the meantime, the buildings keep getting taller.

White Elephant or West Ham?

Lord Coe can’t be too happy today. In his role as chair of the London Olympic Games Organising Committee, Coe – a key figure in winning the Games for the capital – has long insisted that the Olympic Stadium in East London should retain its athletics track in legacy use. But Coe’s vision, to drastically cut back the stadium from 80,000 to a modest 25,000 and make it a home of athletics in London, has long been the subject of fierce debate. Many argue that such a move would be a disaster, as without an anchor tenant and with limited demand for athletics as a spectator sport, the venue would become a white elephant.

Equally, critics say, it is a nonsense to build a world class venue only to then downscale it so severely. These critics say the Olympic organisers should follow the example of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester – where Manchester City took on the stadium - and have a football team become the anchor tenant. This option has been explored. But Coe has continued to insist that the athletics track should remain, whoever the anchor tenant, meaning football clubs, who have no interest in stadiums with tracks separating the supporters from the pitch, lost interest.

But not now. This week West Ham’s new owners – life long Hammers fans – said they wanted the club to move to the stadium after the Games - so long as there is no athletics track and it can seat around 55,000 fans. Ministers, the Mayor of London, the host boroughs – and the taxpayer – ought to be jumping for joy. The opportunity to have one of London’s premier football teams, whose current stadium is only three miles down the road, as anchor tenant of a stadium which currently does not have one ought to be leapt at with open arms. The absence of a legacy tenant for the stadium is one great stadium sized hole in the current legacy plans and West Ham would fill it. 

Olympics minister Tessa Jowell has said the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC), which has now taken charge of the legacy planning from the Boris Johnson’s economic development agency, will look at West Ham’s proposal. Even before West Ham’s renewed interest, Baroness Ford, OPLC chair, said she wanted to review plans for the stadium. Boris Johnson too has been occasionally outspoken in bemoaning the lack of a viable legacy use for the stadium and has said he favours a football club. These three key players – along with the host boroughs (Mayor of Newham Robin Wales, a Hammers fan, said West Ham was the “obvious” solution to the stadium problem) – should now do all they can to turn West Ham’s interest into a concrete commitment. That will of course cost money. Converting the stadium into a football venue and removing the track could cost around £150 million, the OPLC says. It will also require Coe - who did a grand job winning the Games for London - to be sidelined. Those with an interest in making the legacy a success must be allowed to give the West Ham option the attention it deserves.

NB: The author is an Arsenal supporter and therefore is in no way biased towards West Ham.

Loss of Olympic legacy chief a blow for east London

The news today that Tom Russell has parted ways with the London Development Agency’s London 2012 Olympic legacy team is cause for consternation. Russell has been a real champion for regeneration and achieved great success with the Commonwealth Games-led regeneration of East Manchester. Since starting out with the London Development Agency in January 2008 he has brought forward the legacy masterplan, fostered partnership working between the five host boroughs, and established a new urban regeneration company to take on the legacy plan. Many expected that he would remain involved, perhaps as chief executive of the URC, the same position he held in East Manchester.

But this morning the LDA has said his work is done. In an odd press release, they announced that Tom had decided to “pass the baton” to the URC, which takes over the legacy tomorrow. But it did not clearly state that he had resigned. Indeed when questioned an LDA spokeswoman would not say whether he had resigned or whether he had been dismissed, reiterating only that he was “passing the baton”, the phraseology of track and field, not employment law.

Russell has in the past questioned whether the main Olympic stadium should retain an athletics track after the games. That commitment on Lord Coe’s part – some say driven by his own desire to one day head up the International Olympic Committee – meant that legacy plans for the stadium have been hamstrung from day one because no “big ticket” user, as Russell put it, such as a football club, wants a stadium that has an athletics track separating the crowd from the action. Russell was right to raise this as an issue and the Mayor would have done well to heed his warning: more than likely without a major tenant the stadium will not be able to pay its own way. Certainly, track and field is unlikely to keep it going: athletics is not a major spectator sport in England and probably never will be.

Russell had great ambitions for Olympic Park. Since taking on the job, he has been clear that the International Broadcast Centre and the Main Press Centre – the IBC/MPC – which will house the press during the games, was the key Olympic legacy project. Earmarked as a media business hub after the games and potentially creating up to 10,000 jobs, Russell maintained that it was the media centre that would catalyse the regeneration of the area and make it the successful place he was hoping to create. Hence the vigorous behind the scenes negotiations between the LDA and the Olympic Delivery Authority, as budgetary constraints forced the ODA to scale down and cut back the quality of the IBC/MPC. It is unlikely that design watchdog Cabe's verdict on the media centre this week – that it showed a “paucity of imagination” and exhibited an “extraordinary banality” – pleased Russell.

No doubt the story of his exit will soon emerge. But for now its fair to say that with Russell’s departure the promise of a real regeneration legacy for East London has suffered another blow. Working within tough constraints, Tom Russell was one of the good guys.