Crunch point for West Ham’s planned move to the Olympic Stadium is approaching with a meeting of the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) board scheduled for December 5th. It looks likely that the club will be named the preferred bidder for the tenancy, but there is still a lot could go wrong. The talks have been overshadowed throughout by the threat of a legal challenge.
Crunch point for West Ham’s planned move to the Olympic Stadium is approaching with a meeting of the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) board scheduled for December 5th. It looks likely that the club will be named the preferred bidder for the tenancy, but there is still a lot could go wrong. The talks have been overshadowed throughout by the threat of a legal challenge.
There is also the argument that the stadium should be re-opened as soon as possible before the memory of the Olympic Games fades. If the basic work was done to take out 20,000 seats and add catering and toilet facilities, the bill come in under the £38m allocated and the stadium could be reopened in early 2014. Choosing West Ham and installing retractable seats and a roof extension could push back the re-opening until the start of the 2016-17 season.
Against that, the business plan for the stadium is thought to forecast a £2m loss without Premier League football, compared with a £4.8m profit including it. The claim by the LLDC that the Olympic Park would attract 9.3m visitors a year by 2016 relies in part on a Premiership club being an anchor tenant.
It is believed that London Mayor Boris Johnson could find another £10m in City Hall’s budget if West Ham could find an extra £10m on top of their ”best and final’ offer of £15m. Newham Council would have to increase its preferential loan offer to the LLDC from £40m to £68m, while another £20m could come from the wider Olympic Park regeneration budget.