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Residents face Games park 'tax' after 2012
Matthew Beard, Evening Standard15 Feb 2008
Thousands of residents and businesses will be forced to pay an Olympic "tax" to locate in the Games park, the Evening Standard has learned.
Games chiefs are planning to recoup millions of pounds by charging a premium to those who move into the 500-acre site after the 2012 Olympics.
A levy, collected typically by a housing association or managing agent, will come in the form of a maintenance charge or ground rent.
The scheme has been borrowed from cities in America, where it has become a common way of contributing to costs of municipal parks.
The plan is being considered by the London Development Agency as part of a "legacy masterplan" for the Olympic park, where it is the major landowner.
Last month it emerged a £1 billion black hole may appear in Olympics finances if property values slump in east London after the Games.
The LDA believes premium-rate ground rents would be justified considering the amenities that would be on residents' doorsteps.
As well as being amid a green space the size of Hyde Park, they will have new public transport links and stations, and will be able to use the Park's world-class sporting facilities, such as the aquatics centre. There will be 9,000 new homes in the park and 40,000 in the wider Lower Lea Valley area. Media and creative industries are expected to occupy the 1.5 million square metre Olympic media centre.
Revenues from locals would also offset feared losses from high-maintenance sports facilities such as the pool, velodrome and stadium, which have yet to secure anchor tenants.
Potential operating losses may not be fully covered by Ken Livingstone's £10 million-a-year guarantee against deficits. The LDA has closely studied the Olympic park created for the 1972 Munich Games, which like Stratford contained the main cluster of venues win a new urban park run by the city government. Even though Munich's park benefited, until recently, from having football club Bayern Munich as an anchor tenant, it suffered financial difficulties.
Gareth Blacker, the LDA's director of Olympic development, said: "There are many similarities with Munich but the difference with London is we could have considerable commercial and residential incomes which they didn't. In the worst-case scenario the sports facilities might not pay their way, but the plan would be for incomes such as ground rent to make up for this."
The LDA will gradually sell land to property developers and would not necessarily remain owner of all the sports venues. Mr Russell said: "The venues have to be commercially viable in their own right and the LDA has no ambitions to become the long-term landlord. It is difficult to say who could take over - they could have access to a variety of public funds from further or higher education or local authorities."
Next summer the LDA will submit a planning application setting out its framework for open land, schools, health facilities, infrastructure and workspace in the Olympic park. This week it appointed a team for the project: KCAP Architects & Planners, Allies and Morrison, and EDAW, which devised the 2012 bid plan.
