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No football club in 2012 stadium, says shops developer
Matthew Beard, Sports News Correspondent24.11.08
THE owners of the Stratford City shopping centre next to the Olympic Park are opposed to the main stadium becoming home to a Premier League football team, according to sources.
They have said that Westfield, the developer of the £1.4billion retail complex, considers a top-flight team moving in after the Games would be bad for business.
Stratford City is adjacent to the Olympic Park and up to 60,000 fans would pass through the shopping centre en route to the stadium from Stratford Regional station.
The prospect of the main stadium being home to a football club as part of the Games legacy was raised again last month when Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, said an athletics track could make way for a dedicated football stadium to stop the site becoming a white elephant.
West Ham had a bid for the stadium rejected two years ago but remain the most likely club to become a tenant. Mr Rogge is in London today to give a lecture at the beginning of a week-long debriefing from the organisers of the Beijing Games.
Stratford City will be home to flagship stores from John Lewis, Waitrose and Marks&Spencer and these leading retailers are thought to oppose having football as a neighbour. A Westfield spokesman said: "Our understanding is that the ODA [Olympic Delivery Authority] is reducing the stadium to 25,000 and they have not much encouraged it [a Premier League football club].
"I don't think we have made a public view on it although we are keen observers. I am sure it is something our planners would want to have a look at." The ODA is building an 80,000-capacity stadium that will shrink to a mixed use 25,000-seat venue after the Games.
Olympics chiefs are committed to an athletics track and have been in talks with rugby clubs and championship football team Leyton Orient about moving in after the Games.
Reader views (4)
There are already some good sport stadiums in London so why build yet another waisting money.
- Allan Pointon, Stafford,UK
It says volumes about the whole circus that a top Olympic official accepts without hesitation that an athletics stadium is a white elephant! There's nothing about the Games that a normal investor would buy shares in, so why's it happening at all?
It also says a lot about Westfield's view of the local people who, the rest of the week, it will be wanting to shop at their development.
One idea, bandied around locally, is that Leyton Orient should take the stadium over: that should calm any fears about vast hordes of uncouth fans marauding through.
- Mdj, Leyton, e10 london
Stratford is the perfect venue for West Ham F.C. and as far as Westfield are concerned, they were very happy to build West Lakes shopping centre right next to Football park in South Australia, and share their carpark, when they were desperate for a location to build.
- Robert Haysom, Gawler South Australia
What a bottomless pit those Olympics. It is in the wrong part of the country, far away from everything, at the wrong time for the UK and unpopular in the biggest UK city (London). We should have just given this aid package to that place - now we will pay even more tax for many more years!
- Steveo, London NW1
