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Boris Johnson backs plan for university on Olympic park site
Matthew Beard, Sports News Correspondent14.01.09
PLANS for a university on the site of the London Olympics will take a step forward next month with the launch of a viability study backed by London Mayor Boris Johnson.
It is hoped that a top British university will agree to establish a campus in the Olympic Park as a flagship legacy scheme.
Olympic chiefs have asked the Higher Education Funding Council for England to draw up plans for a college to make the commitment to the East End.
Talks have already been held with the Russell Group, which represents universities that receive two-thirds of research funding in the UK.
Universities thought to be interested in a move include King's College, Imperial College and University College London. Loughborough University is also involved in talks.
Olympics chiefs are thought to favour a "federal" arrangement with several universities sharing the campus and specialising in sport and science. The Olympic Park Regeneration Steering Group, attended by government ministers, Mr Johnson and the leaders of the five Olympic boroughs will launch the study next month.
"There is space on the Olympic Park site and some of the housing that will be left after the Games could be used as student accommodation," said a source.
Under the plan, funding will come from the colleges' own capital reserves and public funding. The Mayor's office is also in early talks with universities in Beijing about taking a share in the Olympic campus.
Higher education is a key part of the legacy for the Olympic Park. Booming creative and media departments at the University of East London and London Metropolitan University may be housed in the giant Olympic media centre in Hackney Wick after the Games.
London Metropolitan put itself forward for a legacy role as part of the original media centre consortium including Igloo and Carillion. Last month it emerged Igloo had withdrawn from the consortium after failing to find its share of funding for the £300million-plus venue.
Olympics chiefs have considered numerous cost-cutting measures to absorb the cash crisis. Proposals to build an entirely temporary complex have been ruled out as this would not have made a sufficient saving.
Games chiefs are also under pressure to deliver on a pledge for the site to become a "digital hub" creating up to 10,000 high-quality jobs.
It is thought the Olympic Delivery Authority will revert largely to its original plan to build a permanent 1.3million square metre facility in Hackney Wick, to the east of the Olympic Park.
Building work is due to begin in the spring but negotiations to find tenants for the giant structure -the size of Canada Tower in Canary Wharf- are expected to continue for several years.
Reader views (13)
Excellent idea.
- Fds, UK
Insightful comments by Ms Bradshaw below. Wonder what odds I'd get if I started a book on that depressing scenario now. Or is that not in the spirit of the Games?
- George Roberts, Barking, Essex
Uncle Vanya. People in glass houses mate............
Actually this is the wrong plan in the wrong place. You can't use HE ( not FE Vanya - there is a clear difference) as a way of patching up a real estate deal gone wrong.
- Lee Jones, London UK
When they say university what they really mean is somewhere for all the off-spring of the immigrants in that area to go, not to mention all those that are going to continue flooding in from the third world into the distant future. Ditto any housing that's constructed in the Thames Gateway. In other words, if you think places like Newham and Tower Hamlets are deprived ghettos now, just wait and see how bad they'll be in a couple of decades when the inhabitants have run them back down and the government hasn't got any money for even basic maintenance.
- Sarah Bradshaw, Enfield, Middx
How many more 'Seats of Further Education' do we really need? How more 'Universities', when half of Undergraduates cannot write a decent essay, some cannot even string a simple sentence together and other cannot even do basic maths. Just more fiscal waste and 'Fantasy Island' Blue Sky thinking!!
- Uncle Vanya, East Anglia Area UK
I hope this means we can still use the facilities that remain in tact after the games; after all, we paid for it.
- Ben Pearson, Hackney
There no need for a university on the site.the Olympics village can turn in to affordable flats.and rest of it keep for opens green spaces for the public.
He keep saying we need more affordable flats.
- Andy, London
Yes the land is cheap. Probably their "university graduates" will be as well.
- Georgie, Islington, London
The right honourable Sir Boris Johnson Prime Minister of
Great Britain it has a ring to it
- Richard Hayes, london england
That's what we need. Another university producing over-qualified, dis-satisfied grads that thinks the world owes them a living because they studied not-a-proper-subject for three years to get a 2:2 in tap dance theory and 18th century Hispanic poetry.
…that may not be an actual course but it would be as good for society as most they’ll offer…
Just build some high density homes, that's what London really needs.
- Ben, London
If Cambridge can have a scince park why not Stratford? High tech industrial jobs would congregate nearby.
- W R Stevenson, London
Why a new university? There are already lots of them. Why not do something really imaginative and move three Oxford ones, say Balliol, Magdalen, and All Souls, to the site, as a non-resident University purely for locals and Third Age Londoners. It would do wonders for social mobility, although in which direction I am not entirely certain.
- Tom, Maidstone
Boris saves the Olympics again! Excellent work. He really is the only hope for sorting this project and this city out from the disaster that was Liarstone. I'll be voting for him again in 2012 and after being Mayor if he wants to become PM.
- Paul, London
