London will host the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in the summer of 2012. The 608-acre Olympic Park will be situated
in the vicinity of Stratford, in the Lower Lea Valley. The park will stretch from Temple Mills in the north to Pudding Mill Lane in the south, on the edge of Mill Meads.
World-class venues elsewhere in London will also accommodate Olympic events. These will include tennis at Wimbledon, archery
at Lord’s, the triathlon in Hyde Park, road cycling in Regent’s Park, beach volleyball on Horse Guards Parade,
football at Wembley and shooting at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich. The ExCel exhibition centre will host six events and several others will take place across the river in Greenwich.
An 80,000-seat Olympic stadium in west Stratford will be the centrepiece of the purpose-built development. After the games
the capacity of the stadium will be scaled down and it is likely to retain its athletics role, despite the hopes of West Ham
United that it would become the club’s new home. Perhaps the smaller and equally local Leyton Orient might be in with
a chance.
Revised plans for the Olympic Park were unveiled in February 2007. The key changes related to the layout of the surrounding
parkland and access roads and their ‘legacy’ uses; the positioning of the main buildings does not appear to have
changed from the previous proposal.
The Olympic Delivery Authority is calling the current stage the '3D phase' – demolish, dig and design. Apart from work
on the aquatics centre and on the ‘undergrounding’ of power lines, there is little evidence yet of the impending
transformation of the main Olympics site, much of which is presently a wasteland of low-rent and/or small-scale industries,
like those shown in the images below.
Nor is there much sign of the property boom that has been predicted for the surrounding area. New apartment blocks are being
built beside the main railway lines but most of these were planned before the Olympic announcement was made. Neighbouring
areas like Hackney Wick look as run-down as ever.
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The map shows the locations of the main Olympic structures. All the place names shown in bold type are the subject of individual
entries in Chambers London Gazetteer, the companion book to the Hidden London website.
By far the largest commercial project in the area is Stratford City, a multi-zone, mixed-use ‘metropolitan centre’
planned for former railway lands north-west of the town centre. Despite the granting of planning permission, this scheme has
encountered delays and it is not clear when it might be completed or even what form it will ultimately take. The matter needs
to be resolved quickly because Stratford City will contain most of the ‘Olympic Village’, which will provide accommodation
for the participating athletes.
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