Morning:
13°c
Olympic legacy chief sacked after one year
Matthew Beard30.04.09
The man in charge of delivering a legacy in the Olympic Park is being dismissed after just over a year in the post.
Urban regeneration expert Tom Russell was tasked with shaping the post-Games use of the 2012 Park and sports venues for the London Development Agency. He was appointed as group director of Olympic legacy by Ken Livingstone in January last year.
Mr Russell was widely acclaimed for leading the regeneration work around the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games. But his blueprint for the post-Games transformation of the £7billion Olympic Park has been overshadowed by concerns about the stadium.
Mr Russell's recent candour about the stadium's inability to pay its way because it could not attract a top football club has caused irritation at City Hall and with Government.
It was Mr Russell who also admitted that the only way a Premier League football club could be attracted to the site would be for the stadium to be demolished after the Games at a cost of at least £300million. Seeking an anchor tenant, Mr Russell brought West Ham, Leyton Orient and several Premiership rugby clubs to the negotiating table. But all were deterred by an athletics track incorporated into the design that was presented to Mr Russell as a fait accompli before his appointment.
The stadium will be reduced in capacity from 80,000 to 25,000 after 2012 with an estimated pricetag of £547million making it the most expensive venue of its size in the world.
As chief executive of the New East Manchester Regeneration Company, Mr Russell oversaw the successful conversion of Manchester's Commonwealth Games sports facilities.
Mr Russell, who began his career with Hammersmith and Fulham council, will serve out his three months' notice but has no plans to work on the Olympic project.
He said he was disappointed to be leaving. The task of attracting investment to the Olympic park passes to Boris Johnson's recently formed legacy company headed by Baroness Ford, a former bank executive. She will work within a "legacy masterplan framework" devised by Mr Russell which sets out a 30-year plan for thousands of new jobs and homes in an around the Lower Lea Valley.
Mr Russell said despite the focus on the stadium, the Olympic media centre had been a more challenging part of his regeneration brief because of the legacy pledge to create thousands of jobs for Hackney locals.
He told the Standard: "The stadium has been a difficult issue and I understand why the focus has been on that - athletics is the blue riband event and the iconic venue. The proposals appear counter-intuitive and people are bound to ask why there's not football there. The approach we are taking is bound to be questioned because nobody has done it before. But if we get a school in there and sports governing bodies it will be held up as a model."
Reader views (9)
I am very sorry to see Tom Russell leaving - he had a very difficult job to do and as far as I am concerned was getting things just about right.
It's very worrying.
- Howard Dawber, Canary Wharf, London
OK, so what's his payoff deal?
- Chuck Unsworth, London
The Lea Valley, until lately a rather unattractive wtershed of land no one wanted, will be transformed into a giant sink estate where no one wants to live.\
A true legacy of this Labour Government
- Minnie, London, UK
How can anybody with the slightest intelligence go ahead with this project,all for a few weeks of sport,are you all crazy??
- David., Chertsey.UK.
The only legacy we will be left with will be one of catastrophic debt which our children and our childrens' children will be paying for. It beggars belief that they are considering paying £547million to reduce the size of the stadium.
- R.F., Yorks, UK
The Legacy, or whatever it all means, will be like the Legacy left over from the Athens Olympics. Most of the venues there are mothballed, slowly rotting away.
- Uncle Vanya, East Anglia Area UK
What legacy ever can there be: it is not even in London. It will be the biggest hole in London ever. WHat a wasteful spending at the very wrong time. A welfare check would have been much cheaper and a one-off.
- Georgie, Islington, London
"Mr Russell's recent candour .."
You mean of course that being honest is counter to the whole Labour sleazy socialist ethos.
- Frank, Home Counties, England.
The whole legacy issue is a huge con. Forget about the stadium - the host boroughs are getting very little worthwhile from the Olympics. What will be there for the the people of Walthamstow when all this building work has finished? Just a huge tax bill and the sight of the foreign workers who took their job opportunities all heading for the airports with their wallets bulging.
- Julian Fountain, Walthamstow
