Stadia

Maintenance costs for redundant stadia are significant. Kevin Blowe (2005) extrapolates:

In Sydney, underused venues are costing taxpayers A$46m (£18m) a year to keep afloat and will lose money for at least another decade. The Super Dome, where the closing ceremony was held, recently went into receivership. Six months after the Athens Games, the Greeks face a £6.25bn debt and £60m a year for the upkeep of its unused facilities.
Radical Activist Network newsletter, Spring 2005 www.radicalactivist.net

More recent reports suggest that such facilities need "time to establish their credibility". Sydney Olympic Park CEO Brian Newman told Karolos Grohmann of Reuters (April 6, 2006) that the superdome was the second busiest indoor arena in the world after New York's Madison Square Gardens.

Local authorities plan to retain certain infrastructure after the Games: the Velodrome, BMX arena, Aquatics and Hockey Centres, and the main Olympics Stadium in Newham; a conversion of one of the stadia to basketball in Hackney. Four sports arenas and three 50 metre swimming training pools will be moved to other parts of the UK. Mayor Ken Livingstone has allocated only a total of £10 million a year for upkeep and management of all the venues (R. Mendick, Evening Standard, July 5, 2005).

• The LDA is delaying the construction of a £40 million sports centre in Crystal Palace Park until after 2012 It also announced that £13 million needed to patch up the dilapidated existing stadia is dependent on the filling in of the 50m indoor swimming pool -- one of just two in the capital -- which would make way for indoor five-aside football pitches.
  It is proposed that a temporary 50m pool will be built elsewhere in the park "in the meantime". Despite crumbling facilities, the LDA wants to attract international athletes to train before the opening of the 2012 Games, something one coach -- Trackspeed sprint coach John Powell, who has been using the National Sports Centre for 30 years -- dismissed as unlikely.
• Early fears that the Olympic Stadium would have to remain solely as an athletics track (Mayor Ken Livingstone described the contract with the IOC as "more like an international treaty" [All3Points.co.uk, March 29, 2006]) were allayed in April by Sebastien Coe, apparently after expressions of interest by West Ham United football team. "Lord Coe said that 'nothing has been ruled out', hinting it could double as a football stadium with a running track" (A. Culf, The Guardian, April 21, 2006). There is a precedent with the 80,000-seat Stade de France, which hosted the 2003 World Athletics Championships and is now also the venue for leading football and rugby games (The Times, April 21, 2006).

Environment

The London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Bill, currently in passage from the Commons to the House of Lords (December 7, 2005), which sets up the Olympic Delivery Authority, has been criticised for a lack of Legacy provisions. Local lawyer Laurie Elks set out the problem in a letter to Meg Hillier MP, November 7, 2005. §4(3)(a) requires the ODA "wherever relevant" under its executive functions to "have regard to the desirability of maximising the benefits to be derived after the London Olympics"; §5(5)(b) provides that under its planning functions the ODA shall have regard "in particular" for "the desirability of maximising the benefits to be derived after the London Olympics from things done in preparation for them". Elks charges that "the Bill envisages the ODA as both developer and in some sense its own regulator", and suggests that the ODA's longer term planning functions will not survive as part of the core mission once budget and time constraints start to hit in. He also suggests that while the planning applications contain commitments to landscaping and certain aspects of environmental restoration, it is "wholly unclear where commitment resides for the maintenance of the ecology and environment of the park after the Games are complete". Responsibility may fall to the local authorities, the Mayor of London, the City Corporation or the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, without any funding commitment to go with it.

Open space removed in 2007 from public use, and wildlife habitats destroyed will, we are told, be returned to us by 2020 "or thereabouts". We are asked to believe that there will be money after the 2012 Games for restoring our open spaces. We are also asked to believe that those in charge in 2012 will remember and honour commitments made by their predecessors. Backing this bid requires us to do a lot of believing and to trust those to whom we hand over our open space. What evidence do we have that our trust will be justified? What evidence do we have to date of the respect for their commitments of those involved in the Bid? It took London 2012 and the London Mayor only the six months between July 2003 and January 2004 to renege on their commitments not to build on our open spaces. We are now being asked to believe that they will stick to their commitments over a 13 year period.
Anne Woollett, Chair, Hackney Marsh User Group

• London's Olympic Village will comprise around 5,000 waterside luxury apartments in towers up to 18 storeys high, and is planned as part of a new 'water city' which will incorporate canals, waterways and green spaces of the Lower Lea Valley and Bow Back River areas. A 'water cascade' will be the centrepiece of the development. The future park has also come under fire in aesthetic circles. Architecture critic, Deyan Sudjic, writing in The Observer, May 28, 2006, criticised the design priorities of the masterplan for prioritising the 17-day event to the neglect of landscaping.
• Kathryn Moore, President of the Landscape Institute, has also criticised the ODA design panel for the lack of a landscape architect among its members (www.europaconcori.com, June 10, 2006). However, development of the masterplan was led by landscape architect Jason Prior, managing director of consultantcy EDAW.
• Carfree.org.uk have called for resources usually expended on constructing expensive parking areas to be ploughed into creating "a sustainable carfree community where residents can maintain their mobility through walking, cycling, […] public transport links and an on-site car club".

Housing

Legacy proposals for affordable and social housing quotas (50% of 9,400 new residential units planned; in total, approximately 22,000 new residents will move to the Olympic area [LDA, 2004/2, p 85]) will fall if a future government abolishes the Housing Subsidy. Historically, social housing has benefited invariably the more wealthy working class, and the government's push towards part mortgaged "affordable" housing (minimum salary £26,000) and housing association lettings is no exception. Top floor apartments in the athletes' village will be sold for up to £1 million after the Games are over (I. Pocock, Sunday Times, June 11, 2006). The site of the athletes' village is owned (and will be developed by) London and Continental Railways. LCR will begin sale of apartments as early as 2008 and aims to have 75% sold by the Games. At least 30% of the flats will be sold at discounted rates.

David Higgins, chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority, has asserted a capacity in the Lower Lea Valley for 35,000 new homes, claiming the Olympic site as a catalyst for development (M. Green & R. Blitz, Financial Times, April 3, 2006, quoting a report in The Observer). Architect Sir Terry Farrell has also asserted the need for massive housing construction in the Lea Valley and along the banks of the Thames rather than the brownfield areas of the Thames Gateway and Prescott's other slated growth areas across the south east (C. Clover, Daily Telegraph, July 22, 2006). The scale of building in the Thames Gateway has been attacked for the lack of enforcement of sustainability criteria, and for a lack of supporting infrastructure, including water provision (Green Building Press, March 21, 2006; Dines, May 18, 2000). Other critics highlight the hazard of flooding (E. Leadbetter, BBC NEWS, August 23, 2006).

Previous Olympic Games developments have produced a 'gentrification' effect on the housing market in areas surrounding the Games locations. This is caused by the anticipated and actual improvements to those areas arising from massive infrastructural investments. The most vulnerable sector of the local populations who have suffered negative impacts on their housing in other Olympic cities are the poor with insecure tenure on their homes. In East London it is those who live, often in overcrowded privately-rented accommodation under short let tenancies, who are the most vulnerable. With rents rising in a boom market they are likely to experience rent increases above the average for London and/or be given notice by landlords seeking to profit from property values rising faster than regional rates. This is a population which already has an annual 'churn rate' of 40%. Although the London Development Agency are committed to building up to 42,200 homes in the region up to 2016, the provision of suitable new affordable homes in the region is unlikely to keep pace with the displacement of private rental tenants.
I am not aware of the LDA having in place policies to monitor or ameliorate the effects of this gentrification during the planning and construction phases of the Olympic developments in East London before the construction of an adequate supply of affordable housing is available. This possibility of the displacement of poorer privately-rented tenants needs to be properly evaluated and addressed at the earliest opportunity to avoid us all becoming spectators of the downward pressure on the local underclass which has occurred in Beijing, Athens, Sydney, Atlanta and Barcelona.
Martin Slavin, Probable Impacts of the Lower Lea Valley Developments (Particularly the Olympic Phase) on Tenants in Privately-rented Accommodation, September 25, 2006

East End infrastructure is already overloaded. Finding a GP or an NHS dentist is already MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. This is where our money is needed.
Philip Blott, London Thames Gateway Forum, elected tenants' representative.

This essay is part of the Games Monitor briefing papers available for download from our Media Centre page.