Tuesday Talk -- Olympic Park Megamall Feeds Off London Legacy

(ATR) Westfield Stratford City director John Burton tells Around the Rings the "Gateway to the Games" moniker often attached to his Olympic Park megamall isn't necessarily an overstatement.

The shopping center opens today but will take on new meaning next year when its doors serve as the entrance to Olympic Park for roughly 70 percent of all Games-goers, he says.

Read on for Burton’s take on the synergy between these two massive undertakings as well as the impact his mall will have upon the operation of the Games as well as the ongoing regeneration of east London.

Around the Rings: To what degree is Westfield Stratford City the gateway to the Games? Are there other entrances to London Olympic Park?

John Burton: Within the 550 acres or so that is Olympic Park, you've got a combination of venues and facilities, so you've got the Olympic Stadium itself for the athletics, you've got the Aquatics Center, you've got the Velodrome, hockey, basketball, handball.

Also in that 550 acres, you have the Olympic Village, the Main Press Center and International Broadcast Center. All of those facilities actually wrap around the 40 acres that we have. The interesting thing about our 40 acres is that 70 percent of all the people that are actually going to come to one of the events there actually need to walk through what is essentially a shopping center or really the beginnings of a whole new major city in east London.

There are really only two other entries into Olympic Park, one in the north and one in the south. Essentially, we represent the eastern and central access.

ATR: When did these two enormous projects – your mall and the Olympic Games – first align, so to speak? How did that come about?

JB: I suppose the alignment really occurred on July 6, 2005 when the IOC in Singapore announced that London had won the Games because prior to that, London wasn't exactly favored to win the Games, so we had been in discussion with the Olympic Delivery Authority about how we might integrate if necessary.

At the time leading up to the Games, we had about a 180-acre site where we had planning for over 13 million square feet of development, and that included nearly 2 million square feet of shopping center, where we're going to open this week.

But we also had planning permission for about 5,000 homes and, if anything, the two things London needed from us were somewhere to put the Olympic Village – and therefore where we already had planning permission for 5,000 homes was a very good starting point – and then the second thing was they needed us for these access routes.

ATR: How do you balance the desire to capitalize as fully as possible upon the London Olympics without risking the sort of over-commercialization for which certain past Games have been criticized?

JB: What we actually see in terms of the Games is an incredible opportunity to highlight to people what this regeneration of east London has actually brought.

Besides the mall, we've also invested here in offices, in three hotels, so I don't think anyone's seen true regeneration occurring at such a pace and on such a scale in the U.K. before, and what that does is give people in both London and the rest of the U.K. and probably continental Europe and visitors from all around the world an opportunity to understand that London is changing, it's moving eastwards, and it fits very comfortably with what will be a great legacy.

Having been in Sydney for 2000, the thing that I really do appreciate is the masterplanning that's gone into the Olympic Park here. The fact is that the day the Games finish, you've got an organization and a plan that can be implemented, and I don't think that's really ever been the case for any previous Olympics.

ATR: What sort of relationship does Westfield Stratford City have with LOCOG, and do you anticipate any sources of friction with organizers as the Games approach?

JB: I would describe the relationship that we have with them as a very deep and quality relationship. It is formalized in some areas, which we needed to do back in 2007.

Clearly, apart from the access that we need to guarantee, there's also a great opportunity for them to take advantage of some of our assets. We've got arrangements that let them use several thousand parking spaces that we have here in a brilliant location. We've got agreements that help them insert the look and feel of the Games through all those routes. But by the same measure, we also wanted some comfort that we're running a huge business here that wouldn't be compromised during the Games – that it would be businessas usual for us in every way, shape and form.

ATR: From opening day, will Westfield Startford City feel like an Olympics-themed mall?

JB: It doesn't matter which way you look out, it's going to be hard not to have a sense of the Olympics around you at all times.

A lot of the big sponsors are taking big stores here, whether it be adidas or Lloyd's Bank or McDonald's. Even people like Team Great Britain are taking a store here, so I think everything around you is going to say you are well and truly in the center of the Olympic Park and – as some people describe it – the gateway to the Games.

ATR: Take me forwards in time to the Games themselves. How will the Olympics be reflected within the mall then? Signage, merchandise, promotions, sponsor booths?

JB: There's two things that we're very much on par with LOCOG from the early stages: one is clearly to be able to use the center to create the look and feel of the Games, so their Look and Feel teams are now looking at where on those main thoroughfares and routes they can display that real London 2012 look and feel.

And the other thing that we're very much together on is to ensure that while we're a trading shopping center in a very unique set of circumstances, our retailers respect and protect the investment by the sponsors and therefore avoid any sense of ambush. We will work very hard with LOCOG to ensure that while we've got lots of retailers right on the entry to the Park, that they dorespect both the legal requirements and also, I suppose, the moral obligation being where we are not to undo the good work that LOCOG has done.

ATR: How will your mall be promoted outside the U.K. itself? How will Games-goers from, say, the U.S. or China or elsewhere know to arrive hours early for their events in order to get some shopping done in your mall?

JB: I think our opening next week will bring a new realization not only to people in the U.K. but around the world as to what the facilities are that are here.

Clearly, we'll be spending time with the travel agencies, with the hotels, tour operators, and hopefully in due course, spend a bit more time with LOCOG.

I think we all realize here that one of the biggest challenges that any Olympics organization has is around its crowd control, and in fact there may be some very clever ways that we can take on some of those peaks that occur in crossovers and so on by getting people to spend a little bit longer or arrive a little bit earlier and take some of the load off the transport system, so we're starting to look at that in detail. We've done the whole crowd modeling thing, and I think there's actually a pretty good win-win situation that we could create here based around exactly what you said.

ATR: What will Westfield Statford City do for your area of London? Are these shops in the mall ones that residents of the surrounding neighborhoods can afford, or does that even matter in terms of the regeneration efforts?

JB: In terms of the retailers here, it’s very well balanced. We’ve got people like Primark, who provide some of the best-value and best-priced fashion here which will meet even the most hard-pressed person’s budget. On the other hand, this center attracts people at the other end like Omega and Armani and Hugo Boss.

The other thing we’ve got here is a huge amount of food and dining. We’ve added a fresh food market, huge bowling center, cinema, casino, so the attraction runs from very early in the morning until very late at night.

ATR: What happens to the Olympic angle of your mall after the Games are through? Will they be forgotten within the mall itself, or is this an aspect of Westfield Statford City that’s going to live on?

JB: In the early days, there were lots of question marks about what should the name be to give some sort of legacy, but it will be known as Westfield Stratford City, and that’s where the Olympics will be had.

I think there’ll be a tapering effect, but every single Games has shown a huge desire for those people who either came to the Games or couldn’t get there to come out and visit the park and the facilities and just soak up the atmosphere, so we think there’ll be quite a halo there for probably the best part of a couple of years.

I think London will take a long time to forget that it had the Games here, and we’ll be at the center of that.

Interview conducted by Matthew Grayson.