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Inside Lines: Pressure on Baroness Brady to play ball with Spurs over ground share

A major row is brewing over West Ham’s likely refusal to share the Olympic Stadium with Tottenham Hotspur for a season should the north London club make a formal request to do so while their own new stadium is being built. The London Legacy Development Corporation, with whom the Hammers negotiated a highly favourable 99-year lease from the 2016-17 season, are privately annoyed at the stance taken by the club’s freshly ermined vice-chair, Karren Brady (now Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge), that any such move would be firmly opposed.

Like London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, the Legacy Board are keen to see the largely taxpayer-funded stadium pay its way, and would welcome the income a season of Spurs home matches would attract. One leading figure involved in the original negotiations tells us: “A ground-sharing arrangement for a season seems eminently workable, and profitable. Someone should be reminding West Ham that they need to be flexible on this.”

It was understood West Ham would be able to veto a potential move, even if Tottenham, or any other club, agreed a deal with the Legacy Corporation. But in fact West Ham only have this power of veto for the first season in which they move from Upton Park.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/others/inside-lines-pressure-on-baroness-brady-to-play-ball-with-spurs-over-ground-share-9775014.html

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The only real problem I could see would be excessive wear on the playing surface, but they're going to be using the same reinforced Desso system at the Olympic Stadium as they do now, so I'd have thought it should cope for a season.

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Olympic Park’s transformation from industrial wasteland to stunning wetlands

It has taken seven years but the waterways and wetlands around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park are now established.

It’s easy to forget, amid the constant chatter about the sporting legacy of London 2012, that there are other legacies being tended to as well.

One of these includes the single largest bioengineering project undertaken in the UK – the creation of wetland habitat along 8km of riverbank within the 560-acre Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Led by the Canal and River Trust and Salix River and Wetland services, the park’s once contaminated industrial waterways have been transformed into a lush mosaic of wetlands, restored river banks and rare wet woodlands over the last five years.

Some 400,000 wetland plants, including 30 species of water plants from reeds and rushes to wild flowers, have been planted into 11,000 man-made beds stretching back up to 20 to 30 metres from the river’s edge at a cost of £50million.

Leela O’Dea, ecologist for the Canal and River Trust who has worked on the park’s waterways since 2007, said: “It was just unbelievable, the state of the waterways before. I’m still blown away whenever I come down to the park now.

“The transition in such a short space of time – I’m gobsmacked to be honest and awestruck with the place. It’s so difficult to describe that transition when I see the site now, it’s unrecognisable.”

She said one of the first tasks after a successful Olympic bid in 2007 was making the waterways navigable. Dredging brought up old tyres as well as four cars and several motorbikes.

The next step was stopping raw sewage draining into the rivers from a nearby sewage plant whenever its storm surges overflowed.

Now, four years after planting began, the banks are well established and wildlife has begun to call the area home. Everything from dragonflies – a sure sign of water quality improvement – to herons and kingfishers can be seen on the rivers.

The ultimate aim for Leela and her colleagues would be to see otters, who are known to live in the Upper Lee, to be seen in the park’s waterways – though she admits this may still be some years off.

“It would be amazing if otters came in,” she said. “To have otters in the heart of our city would just go to show that we were doing something right.”

Boat tours are available along the park’s rivers until the end of the year.

Tickets for the 45 minute tour cost £8 for adults, £4 for children or £20 for a family of four, including two adults and two children. Visit queenelizabetholympicpark.co.uk to book.

http://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/news/olympic_park_s_transformation_from_industrial_wasteland_to_stunning_wetlands_1_3789659

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And now this....

West Ham could be open to Tottenham groundshare

West Ham could be willing to allow Tottenham Hotspur to share the Olympic Stadium while their White Hart Lane home is being rebuilt, according to a report.

West Ham will move into their new home in time for the 2016-17 season and are not prepared to share the ground with another club long-term after working so hard to secure the venue.

However, according to the Times, the club might allow Tottenham to rent the stadium for 2017-18, who would then move into their new 56,250-seat home the following season.

Read more at http://www.espn.co.uk/football/sport/story/355077.html#xKcboWh5pguzMgLP.99

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Remains to be seen.

The way it's been handled by politicians (well, City Hall), certainly has been a farce.

But a solution has (eventaully) been reached, and it remains to be seen whether it's a good one or not. Probably best to look again in 10 years time.

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Zaha Hadid's Legacy. I forget who here on GB also dislikes the over-rated Zaha Hadid very much. But I just found this article and it sums up beautifully Hadid's style. The author writes: "....presenting a slight departure from her signature colorless blob futurism. " :lol: Love it. So apt!!

http://curbed.com/archives/2014/10/10/zaha-hadid-cambodia-sleuk-rith-genocide-institute.php

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Quick visit to the Museum of London today to see the exhibition they've got on - Designing a Moment - about the creation of the cauldron. They use mirrors to create the effect of the whole as the room isn't big enough to display the whole thing, and the cauldron itself is the original stems with the test set of petals added, as the orignials are of course now spread all around the world. Nice video with interviews with the designers and craftsmen who created it too. Worth going to if you're in that part of town....

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Anything on Atopia's original designs? :blink:

Trouble was, they were supposed to be designing this, but they got sidetracked:

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Secretary of State for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Caroline Spelman, left, and other dignitaries introduce the One Planet Centre to members of the media, July 12, 2012

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Gosh that Cauldron still looks amazing, even though its a quarter of. Still reckon it wasn't used to its full glory tucked away as it was in the corner of the stadium for the duration. Still, in the past now.

Just out of interest...has any know for the whereabouts of "their country's" petals here?

(I don't even know if NZOC has got theirs yet, or where it is)

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Quick visit to the Museum of London today to see the exhibition they've got on - Designing a Moment - about the creation of the cauldron. They use mirrors to create the effect of the whole as the room isn't big enough to display the whole thing, and the cauldron itself is the original stems with the test set of petals added, as the orignials are of course now spread all around the world. Nice video with interviews with the designers and craftsmen who created it too. Worth going to if you're in that part of town....

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Great to see the cauldron in all its mirrored glory at the museum.... but don't forget Seb Coe's words when the cauldron went AWOL during the fist week of the Games.... 'THE OLYMPIC CAULDRON IS NOT A TOURIST ATTRACTION'....... he is such a knob!

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Olympic Stadium costs soar to more than £600m after roof complications

• Complex structure will not cost West Ham more money

• Balfour Beatty reported to have requested extra £50m

The overall bill for the Olympic Stadium is set to soar well beyond £600m before West Ham United move in after it emerged that installing the complex roof would be far more expensive than originally thought.

The complications will not cost West Ham – due to move into the 54,000-seat stadium from the start of the 2016-17 season – another penny on top of the £15m they have pledged towards the conversion.

Construction Enquirer magazine reported that Balfour Beatty had asked for an extra £50m to cover complications in strengthening the roof and extending it over a new cantilevered structure that will cover retractable seats to be rolled out during the football season.

It adds to the workload to complete the project by August 2016 – itself an extension of the original timetable. Building must pause during the 2015 Rugby World Cup next summer, when five matches will be played in the stadium.

Sources at the London Legacy Development Corporation, which is responsible for the development of the Olympic Park, insisted that the overspend would not be as much as £50m and that some of it would be met by Balfour Beatty. It said any overspend would be covered within the LLDC’s wider existing budgets without recourse to the taxpayer and that there would be no ramifications for the schedule.

The rising costs are likely to provoke renewed criticism from those who think the project has been badly thought-out from the start.

In addition to the £154m contract agreed with Balfour Beatty, which will rise because of the roof issues, there are believed to be additional elements that will take the overall cost to more than £600m by even the most conservative estimate.

Following a protracted saga that included a bitter battle with Tottenham Hotspur and a lengthy standoff over how much West Ham should contribute, the East End club agreed to pay a one-off fee of £15m towards the conversion costs and a rent of around £2.5m a year.

The LLDC, chaired by Boris Johnson, is in negotiations with Balfour Beatty over how the additional costs will be split.

Under the terms of the deal announced in March last year Newham Council borrowed £40m towards the conversion, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport supplied £38.7m and a further £25m will come from the Department for Communities and Local Government. West Ham will pay £15m and the rest will be borrowed by the LLDC.

The LLDC had previously argued that the Balfour Beattie agreement was a fixed price contract but it is understood that an element relating to the roof is negotiable, given the complexity of the work.

Originally the Olympic Stadium was priced up at £280m in the London 2012 bid book before the price tag rose to £429m. The initial plan was to remove the upper tiers of the stadium and scale it back to a modest 25,000-seat bowl after the Games. But the coalition government and Johnson urged a rethink in 2010 and eventually agreed a deal with West Ham that later collapsed under legal challenge.

Following another tender process, the club were awarded a 99-year lease to share the stadium with other tenants including UK Athletics. An operator such as AEG or Live Nation will shortly be appointed to manage bookings in the stadium.

A spokesperson for E20 Stadium LLP, the partnership that is managing the stadium, said: “The project still has close to two years to run and we are in no doubt Balfour Beatty can deliver the programme as planned. This is a complex project and there are always ongoing discussions about specific elements within it.”

The Guardian - http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/oct/20/olympic-stadium-costs-soar-roof-west-ham

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The London Olympics were great, but the main stadium is an ugly, agricultural standard f&&k up....Sydney managed a 115,000 to 83,000 stadium, that looks pretty good, for half the price.

The London stadium is going to end up costing more than the Birds Nest!

They should have got the legacy use properly sorted out long before the Games. As it is, they're putting this new extended roof onto a structure that was principally designed to be easy to get rid of.

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looking on the bright side, at least it was only one white elephant. most of the structures on the park are either converted to community use or dis- mantled and turned to scarp ( i'm still crossing my fingers that the basketball arena will turn-up some where).

the Olympic stadium was a problem from day one. it was suppose to be temporary because no one would want to move-in after the games ( we now learn that west ham was bidding to get the Olympic stadium but was snubbed). but now that the games did not go pear-shaped, every one want it.

it's like the slight ugly girl who get a makeover for her prom. before every ignored her and now she's the're all falling for her.

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http://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/news/paralympic_legacy_honoured_with_dedicated_orchard_space_in_queen_elizabeth_olympic_park_1_3814297

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Paralympic legacy honoured with dedicated orchard space in Queen Elizabeth Olympic ParkAn artists impression of how the orchard at Mandeville Place, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, will look

By Freddy MayhewTuesday, October 21, 2014
11:37 AM

An area of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will be dedicated to the London 2012 Paralympic Games with plans to build an orchard, it has been unveiled today.

Located in the middle of the park and forming a link between its northern and southern hemispheres, the new spot will be named Mandeville Place after the birthplace of the Paralympic movement – Stoke Mandeville Hospital.

It is expected to open in Spring next year, with the idea to grow an orchard inspired by the use of apples during the London 2012 opening ceremony.

The area will be designed to recognise the values and people that made the London Paralympic Games widely considered to be the most successful in the history of the event.

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, board member of the London Legacy Development Corporation which manages the park, said: “It gives me great pleasure to be able to see [the Paralympic Games] being celebrated through the inclusion of a dedicated space in the park.

“I hope local people and tourists will enjoy picking the fruit and taking part in sports activities in the shadows of the trees.”

A brand new variety of apple is being created for the orchard by mixing pollen from different apple blossoms – only the third time this has happened in the capital in the past 50 years.

It has also been revealed that a national schools competition to find a name for the brand new variety of apples is now underway.

Children are encouraged to come up with a name that will reflect the legacy of the Paralympics and the winners will see one of the new apple trees grow in their school grounds.

Entries must be submitted by December 3 with the winners announced on December 10 after being chosen by a panel of experts.

Amber Alferoff of growers the Urban Orchard Project, said: “It is very rare for a brand new apple to be developed and we’re looking to create a deliciously sweet apple that will appeal to the whole family.

“We can’t wait to find out what name the new apple will have and to see it flourish.”

Residents from surrounding boroughs will be able to apply for up to 30 voluntary roles to maintain the orchard under the guidance of The Urban Orchard Project.

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