London 2012 Stadium Concerns Overshadow Legacy Announcement

(ATR) On a day when London’s Olympic Park Legacy Company unveiled plans for post-Games use of the 500-acre site, uncertainty about the future of its 80,000-seat stadium dominated.

OPLC chair Margaret Ford, Mayor of London Boris Johnson and British Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson all failed to successfully allay fears that the running track in the Olympic Stadium could be ripped up after the Games.

Robertson also confirmed that the U.K. government cannot at this stage put in place financial guarantees for a potential bid for the 2015 IAAF World Athletics Championships.

Rival English Premier League soccer clubs Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United are among the bidders seeking to take over the Olympic Stadium. The Spurs proposal appears to state that it has no intention of maintaining the track, which goes against legacy plans submitted to the IOC when London won the right to host the 2012 Games in 2005.

But the panel each said they "welcomed all bids" for the arena.

In another twist, Robertson then added: "It [keeping the track] was a core part of the bid that won us the Games, and remains a core part of our commitment to the future use of the site."

Johnson appeared to fail to understand the intense rivalry between Tottenham and West Ham, amid fears expressed of civil unrest if Spurs were to be allowed to move to the stadium – which sits in the Borough of Newham close to West Ham’s current ground.

"Riots in West Ham? I don’t think so and if there was any trouble it would be dealt with in the usual way," he said.

Robertson, although stressingthat his government supports bidding for major sporting events, is concerned by a $40 million shortfall between projected income for the 2015 world athletics championships and the projected $69 million staging costs.

He is currently awaiting news of his budget in the fall-out from a spending review carried out by Britain's coalition government, which has been in power since May.

Robertson said he could not give the financial guarantee sought by the IAAF and UK Athletics.

"We’re not going to bail out a governing body," he told reporters after a presentation which mentioned the need to attract major international sporting events to the Olympic Park.

The plans for the site, to be renamed Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park post-Games, include up to 11,000 new homes, 35 percent of which will be "affordable" and 40 percent designated for families. Many will be built alongside regenerated waterways. The area around the stadium, aquatics center and velo park will be transformed by the building of "The Orbit" - the U.K.’s tallest sculpture at 115 meters - and Europe’s biggest shopping mall.

Ford admitted that the plans face "fiscal challenges" but pledged to see them through.

"Today the legacy really, really starts," she said. "We take our responsibilities very seriously and will do justice to those responsibilities."

The OPLC’s own legacy is to be devolved by Johnson into a new quango called the Mayoral Development Corporation.

Jeremy Hunt, the secretary of state for culture, Olympics, media and sport, recalled the promise made to the IOC in 2005. "There are huge opportunities for sport within this plan and it lives up to Seb Coe’s ambition that there should be a lasting legacy from staging the Olympic Games," he said.

Withreporting from Adrian Hill in London

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