West Ham Olympic Bid Collapses

[RichSpur58]

my reading of the statement on our OS suggests that we still believe our offer was the best for the stadium. meaning that we believe our offer is the most credible and that we are still interested based on our terms of a stadium without a track and us building one with a track in crystal palace. i do not see this as confirmation that the NLDP is on, as Levy once mentioned it was not viable as a result of the costs involved.

I think we will be watching developments.

At worst we screw West Ham into accepting a woefully inadequate stadium that they dont own. Best is we move in.

 

[L.A. Yiddo]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ol...one-with-a-problem-all-of-its-own-making.html

Ford started a new tender race to try to find the answer on Tuesday after the process that she began 18 months ago collapsed late on Monday amid legal uncertainty.
With just 10 months to go before the Games begin, the credibility of London’s legacy rests on her finding a solution, but the precedent is not encouraging.
The new process marks the third time since 2005 that the Olympic stakeholders have tried to find a solution to a problem entirely of their own making. Both previous attempts have foundered for different specific reasons, but the failings stem from the same issue.
From the outset the Olympic and political leaders who so brilliantly delivered the 2012 bid failed to accept that post-Games athletics cannot be at the heart of the stadium without someone else, either public subsidy or Premier League football, to pay for it. They have also under-estimated the opposition, be it Tottenham or Leyton Orient.
London made a promise to the Olympic family that it would retain an athletics track, and it was a crucial factor in delivering the votes as International Association of Athletics Federations president Lamine Diack rallied his supporters behind Lord Coe’s vision. London is after Diack’s support again, in the bid for the 2017 World Championships, a factor in the timing of yesterday’s announcement.

The Government is desperate to win the competition but, even if London is successful on Nov 11, the welcome benefits for track and field will come at someone else’s expense.
The Olympic Delivery Authority was the first to wrestle with the problem in Sept 2006, after exploratory discussions with Tottenham and West Ham had ended without a deal when the clubs insisted that a permanent track was not viable.
With Coe, Tessa Jowell and Ken Livingstone all refusing to countenance a deal with a Premier League football club or taxpayer support, the ODA canvassed for a solution that would support the 25,000-seat stadium envisaged in the Olympic legacy.
Consultants PMP Legacy spent 18 months attempting to construct a financial case for a mixed-use stadium combining rugby, athletics, concerts and lower-league football. Premier League clubs were expressly barred from the consultation.
PMP’s findings, delivered in early 2008, were inconclusive and damning. They warned that Premier League football was incompatible with a track, and that potential tenants had serious misgivings and that none had been willing to commit to the arena. They concluded that proceeding with the 25,000-seat option was high risk.
That message was finally acted on by Boris Johnson in late 2008, when he accepted that Premier League football was the only way to make the stadium viable. The London Mayor then hired Ford in April 2008 to move the goal-posts, and encouraged Spurs chairman Daniel Levy to bid.
To get Tottenham into the process, the OPLC had to fudge the issue of whether there had to be a track in the stadium. With Spurs genuinely believing it was negotiable, they proposed tearing down the Olympic Stadium and building a new football-only arena on the spot.
With their financial case stronger than West Ham’s it was again the Olympic and athletic lobby that won the day, arguing that Britain had a “moral obligation” to retain the running track.
The OPLC chose West Ham but the legal basis of their bid, reliant as it was on £40 million of public funding from Newham Council, was challenged by Spurs and Leyton Orient and ultimately proved central to the collapse of their bid.
The Government said yesterday that “legal paralysis” was the reason for the change of tack but there was also the growing prospect of defeat.
Leyton Orient were due to file new expert evidence in the High Court this week that went to the heart of the State Aid issue. A former vice-president of Bank of America was ready to testify that no investor would make a loan on similar terms to Newham.
An anonymous complaint to the European Commission further complicated matters. Both Tottenham and Orient deny that they are the source but it raised the prospect of further delays.
Alongside the legal problems, the process was also damaged by the unintended consequence of the Government’s guarantee to keep track until at least 2017, a commitment made to the IAAF last week.
With their single bidder no longer able to guarantee they could open the stadium on time in 2014, facing a strengthening legal challenge and the clock ticking on a High Court date next week, Ford and sports minister Hugh Robertson pulled the plug on the deal late on Monday.
They hope that by offering West Ham a cheaper deal, they can finally square the circle. But it felt more like they were back to square one.

 

[Lilbaz]

We can believe what we like. Taking over the OS and toshing out Crystal Palace with some Artex and a few coats of emulsion was unacceptable.

The OS stadium itself cost £80m to build (according to reports). We were going to spend £40m and use parts of the OS to do up Crystal Palace and also cover the costs of running the stadium. A bit more than a lick of emulsion, and in the long run a better legacy than the 21 days a year West ham were offering.

 

[Lilbaz]

Right back in the office so can type a proper response. Are they taking the fucking piss or what?
West Ham have to pull out of the race because either i) they couldn't raise the money and Newham refused to foot the full bill. ii) Everyone finally realised that the "loan" was illegal.
So what do the OPLC and the Mayor do? Pass it on to the runners up? No, they scrap the whole process and then start a new one with all the rules changed in order to make it possible for West Ham to take over the stadium.

Now unless the OPLC and the mayor have offered us something big (a bit more than the £17m) then Levy should sue. I'm not a lawyer, but there must be a law against this sort of shit. We're not talking peanuts here, this was a £600m stadium that they have robbed us of. I don't care if you hated the thought of going to Stratford, you have to admit they fucked us. They didn't even wine us and dine us, or give us time to look pretty, they just fucked us. Hard and dry. And Levy for one is not a man to be prison raped.

Now did the mayor give us a diamond ring before he got his todger out? I think (hope) so, possibly a guarantee on a loan for the NDP under the £75bn the bank of England just printed. We'll have to wait and see.

 

[Booney]

Presumably West Ham are working from the model set by Man City. Lets not forget that they lease out a publicly owned stadium and it made them no less attractive to a billionaire Arab investor. Sheikh Mansour renegotiated the terms of that lease not long ago and funnily enough his big bags of cash proved quote persuasive to Manchester council.

I personally suspect the West Ham analogy breaks down as they will struggle to fill the stadium and hence will prove far less attractive to an investor. Damned sure that is what the porn barons and Brady conjure up in their wet dreams though.

 

[SpurSince57]

Right back in the office so can type a proper response. Are they taking the fucking piss or what?
West Ham have to pull out of the race because either i) they couldn't raise the money and Newham refused to foot the full bill. ii) Everyone finally realised that the "loan" was illegal.
So what do the OPLC and the Mayor do? Pass it on to the runners up? No, they scrap the whole process and then start a new one with all the rules changed in order to make it possible for West Ham to take over the stadium.

Now unless the OPLC and the mayor have offered us something big (a bit more than the £17m) then Levy should sue. I'm not a lawyer, but there must be a law against this sort of shit. We're not talking peanuts here, this was a £600m stadium that they have robbed us of. I don't care if you hated the thought of going to Stratford, you have to admit they fucked us. They didn't even wine us and dine us, or give us time to look pretty, they just fucked us. Hard and dry. And Levy for one is not a man to be prison raped.

Now did the mayor give us a diamond ring before he got his todger out? I think (hope) so, possibly a guarantee on a loan for the NDP under the £75bn the bank of England just printed. We'll have to wait and see.

I thought you just said it was an £80m stadium.

How have we been 'robbed' of it, exactly? We don't know what, if anything, was promised or hinted at behind closed doors. I very much doubt anything was ever written down.

 

[RichSpur58]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...blasted-pointless-Olympic-Stadium-review.html

Pointless legal challenge hey

 

[worcestersauce]

Its quite simple there can be no athletics legacy in the Olympic park as any athletics only stadium can only be a white elephant, everybody knows this, it was obvious from very early on and that is why they decided they must sell it on to a Premiership club and the track would not be a stipulation, which is what Spurs were told. The problem really came about when Newham/West Ham offered to buy the stadium and keep the track, the authorities thought they could then get the legacy with no liability and so made a big thing of the track being the legacy short term to save face even though they knew West Ham had no intention of keeping the track long term.
Eventually it has become clear that West Ham can't really afford it yet anyway and, I have no doubt, refused to sign a cast iron guarantee that they'd never rip up the track as Spurs were demanding along with the Judicial Review.

Still as long as Coe gets his big job at the IAAF nothing else matters.

 

[RichSpur58]

Wouldnt it be great if everybody withdrew their interest.

 

[Lilbaz]

I thought you just said it was an £80m stadium.

How have we been 'robbed' of it, exactly? We don't know what, if anything, was promised or hinted at behind closed doors. I very much doubt anything was ever written down.

According to the bid process, West Ham were preferred bidders. If they could not meet their obligations then we (as runners up) were to take over. West Ham could not meet their obligations (i don't care what they say about legal wranglings taking years blah blah) but instead of taking over, the bidding process is to be re-run with changes so that WH can take over.

The cost of the stadium itself is £80m, the cost of the land/infrasturcture etc... came to £600m by reports (and Golds own words). Land and infrastructure are already in place at CP, but you know this, you are just trying to be argumentative as usual.

 

[Lilbaz]

Wouldnt it be great if everybody withdrew their interest.

Leave it as a 25k athletics stadium and put Coe in charge of finding the money to run it.

 

[RichSpur58]

Leave it as a 25k athletics stadium and put Coe in charge of finding the money to run it.

Id love to see Ed Warner and Seb Coe in parliment trying to explain where all the money went.

 

[rockyhotspur]

Leave it as a 25k athletics stadium and put Coe in charge of finding the money to run it.

Or leave it at a 25K seated stadium and rent it to Orient.

 

[jimbo]

Hopefully at some point they'll just get bored and let us have it.

 

[sloth]

If DL really wants the Olympic Stadium then the strategy must be obvious. We could win this in the court of Public Opinion.

i) DL does the sums and makes our best offer for the stadium plus a proper rebuild of Crystal Palace.

ii) DL briefs the press. Our offer generates X hundred million for the taxpayer and provides proper athletics facilties. Latest proposal mooted for a new tender process involves minimal recoveyr of the supposed £500m spend and the rental is not guaranteed, nor would it cover the interest lost on the taxpayers debt.
iii) In the current desperate economic crisis how could the Government justify turning down our offer when they are closing hospitals for the sake of a few million. Surely the press would have to be on our side.

What's going to be very interesting is to see what happens if/when Doha wins the 2017 World Champs. Without the promise of a major athletics event on the horizon the argument for keeping the track seems very flimsy. The govt. I'm sure, is currently keen because they think the WC will bring something like £500m to London and the UK (can't believe it myself but Hugh Robertson or someone came out and said it yesterday), without that sweetener is there really going to be an appetite for essentially subsidising West Ham and UK athletics when there's another self-financing offer on the table?

We'll see.

 

[Spurs1960]

Apparently not so. Can't remember where I read it this morning, but West Ham will be responsible for/expected (and allowed) to make the necessary changes to make it suitable for Premiership football. They'll have to pay though.

No the statement is that that is the job of the OPDL or whatever they are called and that they will get an extra £60 million on top of the £35 million to do this.

West Ham are merely a tenant (according to Boris - some independent process that will be if the result is already decided).

 

[Spurs1960]

my reading of the statement on our OS suggests that we still believe our offer was the best for the stadium. meaning that we believe our offer is the most credible and that we are still interested based on our terms of a stadium without a track and us building one with a track in crystal palace. i do not see this as confirmation that the NLDP is on, as Levy once mentioned it was not viable as a result of the costs involved.

It has been made perfectly plain by ministers and Boris that the track will remain (in theory for 125 years) so the only option is retractable seating. We have indicated we are not interested if the running track has to remain leaving fans to far away.

 

[sloth]

No the statement is that that is the job of the OPDL or whatever they are called and that they will get an extra £60 million on top of the £35 million to do this.

West Ham are merely a tenant (according to Boris - some independent process that will be if the result is already decided).

Yep I saw that this morning, I must have misunderstood yesterday (or whoever was reporting did).

 

[Lilbaz]

May change though. The OPLC are meeting with Ministers today to explain this mess and by all accounts they are not happy, how is Cameron going to explain to everyone who's getting their pension cut or are made redundant the £95m cost?

 

[Spurs1960]

Make the Tottenham area an economic zone or whatever they call it so companies moving into the area get tax breaks. Invest in infastructure (£17 million so far) put pressure on for Spurs to get the regeneration cash we bid for, agree to help towards the cost of housing (or give us a treasury loan at preferential rates ala Wet Spam) and let us build the number of houses we originally wanted. Assist with putting in a bid for European money for a major regeneration project in the area other than the stadium. Simplez.

Then we can agree to build NDP.