Decision on Olympic stadium's future delayed

Discussions on the future of London's new Olympic stadium after the Games in 2012 will have feelings running high in England.

The decision on the stadium's future was scheduled for Friday by the company responsible for developing the Olympic Park in the years after the Olympics. In the eleventh hour, however, the decision has been postponed.

According to The Olympic Park Legacy Company, OPLC, so much is at stake that the company needs more time to examine the proposals submitted.

The two football clubs Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur have come to blows over this, each with their very different take on the future the Olympic stadium.

Dispute over raceways
West Ham wants to preserve the stadium with running tracks thereby meeting London's promise to the International Olympic Committee, IOC, to ensure 'an Olympic legacy' after the Games. West Ham's plan is to continue the stadium with seating for both football and athletics - but with a downgrade in capacity from 80,000 to 60,000 spectators.

Tottenham's wish is to completely tear down the new Olympic stadium after the Games and replace it with a new football stadium. The problem with a combined football and athletics stadium is the poorer audience experience and atmosphere during football matches, where spectators are located far from the pitch.

"Try to mix football and athletics and you end up with a great big bowl of nothing," as Tottenham coach, Harry Redknapp, put it in The Sun.

Instead the club will upgrade the existing athletics stadium, Crystal Palace National Sports Centre, and thereby provide good athletic facilities for track and field sport.

Finally, the original plan to preserve the Olympic Stadium, but to downgrade the capacity to 25,000 spectators, still lingers in the air.

Poor audience experience
The English stadium expert Ian Nuttall also warned against combining football and athletics in UK newspaper The Times. A solution becoming less and less popular.

”Athletics brings such a change in the scale of a typical football stadium that it is very hard to work around it," says Ian Nuttall to The Times, pointing out that representatives from London's Olympic bid disregarded advises that a combined football and athletics stadium is not economically sustainable.

Instead he feels that London will end up with a giant white elephant. The alternative is a million-pound investment in a stadium construction, which will only be in use for a few weeks during the games if Tottenham's plans are realized.

Wasted labour and lost tax money 
In the bidding process, the London Olympic bid team promised the International Olympic Committee to keep the athletic facilities at the stadium, should they win the bid. That promise will be broken if Tottenham Hotspur wins the tender.

On the other hand, the desire for economic experiments with tax money is hardly high after Games preparations blasted all budgets and now operates with a total cost of over nine billion pounds.

The prospect that a more than four billion kroner investment in an Olympic stadium will be wasted has also aroused strong feelings. The criticism comes in particular from former London mayor Ken Livingstone, who took part in the process of getting the Olympics to London.

He believes that it would be terrible to tear down such an expensive new stadium and also points to environmental impacts:

”We used half the normal amount of steel and concrete that you would use on a stadium of that size – and there were environmental reasons for doing that. To demolish it? There's a carbon-footprint cost here which is just not acceptable," said Ken Livingston.

Alternative solution in Brazil
According to Ian Nuttall, the current debates and dilemmas about the future of London’s Olympic stadium arose long ago when planners chose to ignore advice about what it would take to ensure its legacy.  

Instead Ian Nuttall highlights Brazil's proposal for the Games in 2016. Here plans are that the opening ceremony will take place at a large stadium seating 82.000 spectators while the athletics competitions will be set in a smaller stadium.

The decision about what will happen with London’s Olympic stadium after the Games is expected to be decided later this year.
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/19/ken-livingstone-tottenham-hotspur-olympic-stadium
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympic_games/london_2012/9371972.stm