My inability to cope with modest technical advances explains why I’ve no below average photograph to show you from my visit to the Park at around 6.30 this morning. Trust me, though, stuff is going on and on and on. One side of the Greenway has been fenced off as improvements to it continue, and the vast, metal skeleton of the media centre has sprung up as though overnight. Workers were trudging in, rucksacks over their shoulders. A security guard strolled past with an Alsatian. It’s still action, action everywhere.

The failure of the building programme to fall behind schedule has reduced doomsayers to silence, at least for the time being. We’re seeing a break with Olympic tradition. Races against time to get Games infrastructure fit for, well, races against time are as much a part of the standard media script as cost over-runs, and even the latter lose a little zip when they aren’t being re-fuelled by the former. In any case, the 2012 budget bad news story has been told to death. We have burned the cash already. The story that matters now, or should do, is the one about ensuring something good rises from all that ash.

That task now falls primarily to the Olympic Park Legacy Company, which in the long term must ensure that a green and pleasant new neighbourhood is implanted in the Lea Valley and in much shorter term figure out what will happen to the main stadium after the Olympians and their medals have gone home. In contrast to the confidence expressed about the future of other competition venues in the Park – the Aquatics Centre, Velopark and Handball Arena – doubt still hangs around its centrepiece. Many angles are being explored, many complicated sums are being done and much depends on the Football Association’s attitude to including the stadium in its bid to host the 2018 World Cup. Don’t rule out their ruling it in.

For now, we need to look below the surface for signs of serious Olympics dissent. The independent-minded Tory AM Andrew Boff has criticized the burgeoning Olympic Village. Athletes will reside there during the Games, but afterwards it will provide 3,000 homes for Londoners. These will be “supported by new parks, open space and community facilities,” enthuses the ODA. But Boff has condemned them as, “soulless high-rise courtyard developments that have failed Londoners so many times before.” He asks: “Has nothing been learned from London’s post war housing disasters?”

Meanwhile, anti-Games campaigners are claiming that proper procedures were not followed when thousands of tonnes of soil containing radioactive elements were moved across the Park and sealed underground a short distance from the stadium. They are unimpressed by the ODA’s and the Environment Agency’s insisting that there is no danger to the public.

Then there’s the escalation in hostilities between residents of Leabank Square in Hackney Wick and Skanska, which is building the media centre on the opposite bank of the river. Attempts by a member of the ODA’s Community Team to fix a meeting to discuss the problem were publicized on the Leabank Square blog. Some of the readers’ comments posted there about the Community Team member in question have resulted in the ODA threatening legal action unless the offending comments are removed.

With all this simmering unrest, it’s a comfort to know that the police are keeping a beady eye. There may still be three years to go, but the Met is already seeking such as Olympics CCTV project managers and policing team programme co-ordinators. Who said the Games wouldn’t create jobs?

]]> http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/olympic-park-progress-continues-despite-rumblings-of-discontent/feed/ 0 http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/progress-continues-at-pace-on-the-olympic-village/ http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/progress-continues-at-pace-on-the-olympic-village/#comments Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:02:00 +0000 admin http://www.london-2012-olympics.net/2012-olympic-news/progress-continues-at-pace-on-the-olympic-village/ Building work is progressing well on the Olympic Village with construction now underway on all of the residential plots.