West Ham Olympic Stadium

worcestersauce said:

The thing is that the stadium was a complete white elephant after the Olympics ended, as an athletics stadium it could never pay it's way and a little way down the line it would have become an issue which is why Boris had to get a Premier league club as a Tennant.
What West Ham will pay will keep the thing afloat and that is all the politicians wanted that being the case they were happy to subsidise West Ham, I know some people will say the financial support the West Ham owners gave to the government's election campaign helped that decision but I couldn't possibly comment.

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beats1 said:

Im struggling to see how this white elephant statement is valid. As far I am concerned its a bullshit argument

What is an white elephant, a drain on public resources that cost a lot of money and that isn't being used

So how would this be a white elephant?

One of the reason this expansion cost so much was because it was designed specifically not to be a waste.

There was no facilities on site that would cost a lot to maintain

The stadium was going to be reduced to a sustainable amount

The structure itself was temporary bar the lower tier.

I use to comment a lot on SSC however I don't because the amount of idiots on there. Im not in engineering at the moment due to wanting to be a musician but I think I was one of a few actual engineers posting on there and that was before I was eligible for becoming a chartered engineer.

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worcestersauce said:

because it would be a national stadium built with public money that would be greatly underused. A stadium sitting empty and unused for vast periods of time would soon become a white elephant in the eyes of the public even if there wasn't a huge running cost. It isn't the cost that makes it a white elephant, that just makes it even worse.
Fill it every couple of weeks for a sport, any sport, and it has a purpose.

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beats1 said:

I never saw cries about Crystal Palace being a huge waste of money.

Also why not do what they are doing with the other facilities and open it up for the public to use with local schools training their in those facilities

Meanwhile there is other vendors that are wanting to use like Essex Cricket ground and start doing concerts to an alternative venue to O2 arena similar to how AEG planned to do with us at the OS

Also in terms of the stadium now its a white elephant when not in use by West Ham as the current conversion will take 7 days and cost a lot of manpower to do according to one ITK

The point of stadium was to be a home for athletics and it can't be that when season is on

As someone who has spent a lot of time with people in and around team GB its amazing that athletics is being overlooked. The competitive season is only during the summer but there are other things in the world of athletics during the off season like heats and etc. whilst training camps as well.

My university has better facilities available for Athletes than the olympic park has and is currently home of British athletics.

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Wellspurs said:

This from a Spammer blogger.. cheeky git.

EXCLUSIVE
West Ham have tonight revealed that Spurs could share the Olympic Stadium but that it remains “hugely unlikely.”
The Daily Mail chose to re-run the ancient story in this morning’s newspaper opening old and festering wounds among fans.
TalkSport’s Adrican Durham then waded in this afternoon by having Hammers fans give their views and even fining one or to who claimed to have no issue about sharing with Spurs!
However, A Spurs spokesman had already told the Mail : ‘We are looking at all options but Wembley is our preference.’
And this evening a very highly placed West Ham insider told ClaretandHugh exclusively: ” We are tenants, so it could happen. We keep saying we have a good deal, but it’s NOT as amazing as people think.
“Having said that nobody believes it will happen for a moment. From everything we are hearing and are being told it seems far more likely that they will go to Wembley.”

In the very unlikely event of a ground share happening for one season our fixtures will always have priority and the stadium will have the look and feel of West Ham United’s home!”

What does he mean jellied eel wall paper, swastikas?

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worcestersauce said:

Crystal palace was roundly criticised by many people, not least the Athletics community because it was a pretty poor stadium and they wouldn't spend much money on it which is why nobody called it a white elephant, nobody outside athletics cared about it.
Opening it up or schools was exactly Newham's plan but that wasn't deemed worthwhile and concerts would not be acceptable as anything other than an extra curricular activity, it is fine at the O2 because that was never meant to be a sports arena.
You are right the idea was for it to be a home for Athletics but they soon realised that wasn't viable, perhaps they knew it all along, but Lord Coe wanted his promotion so they wouldn't allow a fully football stadium which leaves us with the pigs ear of a situation that we have now.

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Spursidol said:

http://www.skysports.com/rugby-unio...-medical-staff-or-cleaners-at-olympic-stadium

Taxpayers will foot the bill for ticket checkers, medical staff and cleaners at games when West Ham move to the Olympic Stadium, and the club also will not have to pay for turnstile operators, much of the security and steward personnel and catering staff on match days.

So Rent received less costs funded above = minimal net income to LDDC = no chance of ever repaying the conversion cost.

As a taxpayer I'd really like the white elephant knocked down, before it costs more money. Let alone the state aid argument

Why the f**** it was allowed to be built originally with ZERO possible economically viable future use is the real question.

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Spursidol said:

http://www.skysports.com/rugby-unio...-medical-staff-or-cleaners-at-olympic-stadium

Taxpayers will foot the bill for ticket checkers, medical staff and cleaners at games when West Ham move to the Olympic Stadium, and the club also will not have to pay for turnstile operators, much of the security and steward personnel and catering staff on match days.

So Rent received less costs funded above = minimal net income to LDDC = no chance of ever repaying the conversion cost.

As a taxpayer I'd really like the white elephant knocked down, before it costs more money. Let alone the state aid argument

Why the f**** it was allowed to be built originally with ZERO possible economically viable future use is the real question.

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Lilbaz said:

If they had reduced capacity athletics, concerts, x games, cricket and naming rights could have covered the running costs. The O2 gets £6m a year from naming rights alone.

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philip said:

Of course they could have.

West Ham will be contributing between £2-2.5m and £15m extra.

For that, practically nothing else can staged there the entire football season.
The taxpayer had to spend £200m to convert it for west ham and will have to spend some hundreds of thousands each year changing the seating each summer.

That £200m cost of converting, over West Ham's 99 year lease is more or less what they're going to be paying.

In other words, west ham's lease is doing nothing but paying for the conversion + some interest. Over 99 years!

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