![]() The most remarkable thing about the games happened before the first sprinter left the starting block. The media center is being expanded to contain 1.2 million square feet (0.11 million square meters) of office space and already has BT Sport network and its TV studio-the largest in Britain-as a tenant. ![]() The aquatic center opens next summer for community use at affordable prices. The stadium will be used for next summer's Rugby World Championships, then rented to the West Ham soccer team. For one thing, the Olympic buildings were successfully repurposed. Lock gives pretty good marks to London anyway. "The government report was a bit of a puff," says John Lock, director of the University of East London's 2012 center, which coordinated the university's engagement and research associated with the games. In November, the House of Lords presented its report, warning that the Olympic legacy is "in danger of faltering" because of squabbling over major projects and "little evidence" of a postgames boost in sports participation. The report went on to trumpet the "accelerated progress of urban regeneration in East London," an increase in sports participation, and the boost to the economy, among other benefits. "They said we couldn't run a bath-and we delivered the greatest Olympic and Paralympic Games the world has ever seen," Boris Johnson, London's mayor, gloated. So how did London do? Let's examine the report card, then look at other host cities post-Olympics.Ī 70-page report published last July by the government and the mayor of London says the games turned out just dandy. Meanwhile, paint is peeling on Beijing's $423 million Bird's Nest stadium, now a mediocre tourist attraction with an annual upkeep of $11 million. The Montreal Games in 1976 nearly bankrupted the city and left it with a spectacularly ugly stadium-"an architectural excrescence," a Canadian journalist called it, that was prone to roof collapse from too much snow (yes, it does snow in Montreal). The economic uplift would raise all boats.Ī cautionary note: It is not uncommon for the Olympics to be long on promise and short on delivery, not to mention unintended consequences, such as the forlorn remains of stadia left behind like decaying whale carcasses. The Olympics should be based on what happens afterwards instead of during."Īfter the Olympics, said the planners, buildings would find new life as community sports centers, and the athletes' village would become private housing (half to be earmarked for low-income buyers). "The bid," said Jerome Frost, head designer of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), "was positioned on what we would leave behind. Touted as the "Legacy Olympics" (and at $14.8 billion, a bargain compared to Sochi's reported $51 billion cost), these games would be, promised then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, "a force for regeneration," a chance to address East London's maladies. ![]() It would use the games to jump-start the renewal of East London, the historically wrong-side-of-the-tracks part of the city that by any measurement-income, unemployment, life expectancy, health-sits at the bottom of the social and economic barrel. Olympi-philes may remember that when London squared off against Paris to vie for the right to host the 2012 Summer Games, the deal clincher was this: London would not merely celebrate sport. Though it may be too early to sum up the Sochi effect, other than hotels-built-while-you-wait, " bars that look like dentists' offices" (in the words of a New York Times reporter), and tweeted photos of communal toilets, a postmortem of the 2012 Summer Games held in London and earlier venues can be done. On to the next town- Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Another bank vault full of gold medals awarded. ![]() Please note: if you require disabled access please contact us on 0800 999 3080 before you visit us at the Metering and Billing Office, so that we can provide you with alternative directions to the Office and offer you further assistance if it is required.The Sochi Olympics end on Sunday. If you choose to come to the Visitor Centre to register your account with us please do arrive at least 30 mins prior to our closing time to ensure that you have ample time to complete the necessary forms before we shut. Our Customer Services department can assist with registration, account, billing and technical enquiries during these times. Our office hours are Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm and Saturdays 8am to 1pm, during which we are able to deal with general enquiries. An emergency may include circumstances where injury to life and or serious damage to property are threatened, such as a flood or electric failure or shock risk, additionally full outage/ loss of heat and hot water and substantial leak of any form from the Heat Interface Unit (HIU) will be considered as an emergency. ![]()
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