The man who was charged with making the 2012 Games run on time claims they are mired in politics and indecision. Is he right?
Paul Kelso
Saturday November 4, 2006
The Guardian
A year ago Jack Lemley, a square-shouldered American construction baron, walked into the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to meet a sceptical press. Appointed from an international field to chair the Olympic Delivery Authority, the septuagenarian was cast as the cure for a nation almost phobic about major capital projects in the wake of the Dome, Wembley and sundry other shambles.
He earned his theatrical nickname, “the Terminator”, while overseeing the construction of turnpikes in the US, a business that makes negotiating industrial relations in post-Thatcherite Britain look like a tea party. That no-nonsense reputation was enhanced with his stewardship of the £8bn Channel tunnel project. For a man capable of linking the UK with continental Europe, ran the argument, coordinating an Olympics should be a doddle.
The reality has proved very different. Last month Lemley abruptly walked out on his two-day-a-week post claiming he wanted to spend more time looking after his business interests in the US. Many suspected that the American’s failing health was a factor - he was treated for a heart murmur at home in the summer and sources suggest his contribution has become increasingly erratic since his return - but the Olympic project was not rocked on its axis. What the Terminator failed to mention in his bland resignation statement was that he would be back.
On Tuesday, having retired to the safe distance of his home town of Boise, Idaho, Lemley gave a more damning account of his departure. A “huge amount of local politics”, he told the Idaho Statesman, had made the job intolerable. “I went there to build things, not to sit and talk about it, so I felt it best to leave the post and come home,” he said, fuelling the fears of sceptics convinced that London’s Olympic dream is destined to become a nightmare of feuds and rising costs. Rather than help raise an Olympic city in the East End, Lemley has caused the first crack in its foundations.
Even the Olympic truce of Athenian legend lasted only 12 days either side of the ancient games, so for London to have made it to the second year of the preparations without a major row should be counted as a minor triumph. That said, Lemley’s accusation goes to the heart of the Olympic project. London’s bid was successful because of the unprecedented level of cooperation between government, the mayor and sporting bodies. Now there are real signs that the coalition is starting to fracture. But are the games really bedevilled by the sort of problems Lemley describes?
It plainly suits Lemley the American to blame his embarrassing departure on someone else, and there are many in London who suspect he is involved in damage limitation to protect his reputation.
Confused
“There has been a lot of static around this week but frankly that goes with the territory,” said David Higgins, Australian chief executive of the London Development Agency, yesterday. “I really enjoyed working with Jack and his biggest contribution was to say at the start, look, let’s stop rushing because that’s the biggest problem. When you rush these projects you make mistakes, the stakeholders get confused and costs can rise. So we have spent nine months evaluating the original plans. It makes sense, not least because we were never going to get on to the land until July 2007 anyway.”
But the breezy dismissals of Lemley’s criticisms dispensed by Higgins and his government counterparts belie the very real teething troubles of a project that has until now proceeded almost without a hitch.
Lemley’s intervention coincides with a crucial stage in the games project on two fronts. The ODA, led by Higgins, is involved in intense negotiations with the Treasury over the true cost of delivering not just the Olympic infrastructure but the promised root-and-branch regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley. Meanwhile a corrosive dispute over the post-games use of the main Olympic stadium threatens to divide London 2012’s most senior power-brokers. How London resolves these issues will have a huge bearing on the success or otherwise of London’s Olympics.
The original budget for building the Olympic facilities, agreed after prolonged bargaining between London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, and Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, was £2.375bn. The funding package agreed would see £625m come from a premium on London council tax bills, £250m from the London Development Agency and £1.5bn from the lottery. Alongside this the government promised a further £1bn of public funds for general infrastructure costs, such as burying powerlines that currently run across the site.
New homes
Now that £1bn looks like a fag-packet calculation and more money is needed. The reason is not that the cost of building the games has risen, merely that London’s ambitions have. Since winning the pitch in Singapore last year, Livingstone has announced plans to build 40,000 new homes in the Lea Valley. The Stratford City development, Europe’s largest residential-retail project, is ongoing and the Olympic Park has been redrawn to incorporate this parallel development.
The growth of the regeneration project has cost implications for the government, as Higgins told the culture and sport select committee last week. The bottom line is that while the Olympic building budget will remain the same, the overall price tag for the games, including regeneration costs, could soar if the government wants to make good on the grand ideal it somewhat airily promised in July 2005.
Yesterday Higgins defended the apparently mounting costs: “We have looked again at the original funding package, and checked it against the realities of the site and the new regeneration plans for the Lea Valley that have been introduced since London won the games. What we have said to government is look, you have a huge site with a fence round it and you have planning powers over the area, so it makes sense to do the regeneration work as a single package, and we suggested a budget to them to carry out a package of regeneration measures.”
But while his team wrangle with the Treasury with a view to finalising a budget in the new year, potentially more serious trouble is brewing on a second front. The centrepiece of any Olympics is its main stadium, so it is appropriate that the most divisive issue in London’s fledgling project concerns the 80,000-seat arena that will host opening and closing ceremonies and the athletics events.
Across the city at Wembley the incomplete home of English football provides an eloquent warning of the pitfalls of building stadia, while to the north of the Olympic site at Picketts Lock there is a brown field where this same government once promised an athletics track fit to host the 2005 world championships, only to renege at the last minute. The capital, it is fair to say, has serious form.
Once again the row centres on the legacy of London 2012. London promised that the games would leave lasting benefits for Olympic sport in the UK, with the stadium at its heart. The vision they bought was of an 80,000-seat stadium reduced after the games to a 25,000-capacity athletics arena. The problem for those faced with meeting that pledge is that taxpayers have been promised there will be no white elephants, and an athletics stadium on that scale simply will not pay for itself. Squaring the circle of London’s two buzzwords, legacy and sustainability, is a challenge that threatens to divide those running the Olympic project at the highest level.
On one side are senior figures including Livingstone and organising committee chairman Lord Coe, who are committed to an athletics legacy. On the other is government, led by sports minister Richard Caborn, who believes engaging a Premiership football club as an anchor tenant is the only way to make the stadium pay. In Manchester the Commonwealth games stadium was taken over by Manchester City with the warm-up track alongside the main stadium retained as the athletics legacy. Caborn believes this is the best model; senior Olympic figures are equally vehement that football should not again be subsidised on the cheap.
The row has also set alarm bells ringing within the IOC hierarchy and it was the talk of senior figures, including the IOC president, Jacques Rogge, during a visit last month to 2008 hosts Beijing.
Lord Coe will be acutely aware of this tension, not least because of his own political ambitions which may be a factor in the stadium endgame. He is widely tipped as a future head of the IAAF, athletics’ governing body, and is expected to stand in 2011. The post brings with it membership of the IOC and once in sport’s most rarefied club he would have every chance of one day assuming the presidency.
Takeover bid
The most likely candidate to take on the stadium is West Ham United, whose ground at Upton Park lies just a mile to the east of the Olympic site. Unfortunately for those hoping for a quick solution to the problem, West Ham is the subject of a hugely controversial takeover bid from a consortium led by Kia Joorabchian, an Anglo-Iranian with links to the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, and Eli Papouchado, an Israeli property developer who has confessed he has no interest in football. For those in Olympic circles who already regard the over-mighty national game with distaste, this brew of exotic interests is seen as altogether too rich.
The biggest complicating factor concerns the unique traditions of English football, in which supporters demand to be close to the pitch. If West Ham or Tottenham Hotspur, another potential tenant in need of a larger ground, were willing to stomach a permanent athletics track round their pitch the argument would be more straightforward. Providing they were willing to put up around £100m of the capital costs of the games they could probably secure the stadium, which would be reduced from 80,000 to something more appropriate, perhaps 60,000 for Tottenham and 45,000 for West Ham. Neither club is willing to do so.
Worryingly there is no sign of a solution and time is running short. Architects HOK Sport are due to start drawing up designs in the new year and as yet they don’t know exactly what they are building. Any late changes to plans will only increase costs.
Predictably all the agencies involved are playing down the impact of a turbulent week. Ironically one of Lemley’s better ideas provides the best defence. The ODA is proceeding with a plan they call 2-4-1; two years of planning starting in July 2005, four of construction and one of testing. With the bulldozers not set to roll until July the government and the ODA are united in claiming that the current turbulence is an entirely appropriate debate.
True, London can point to an impressive list of milestones reached and a recent visit from the IOC’s senior evaluation team gave the city a clean bill of health. A delivery partner has been appointed to oversee construction on the Olympic Park, a consortium has been awarded the main stadium contract and a planning application for the entire site is due to be lodged in January.
By then London will also need to have presented solutions to the stadium question and emerged from talks with the Treasury clutching a workable and binding budget. If not, the tremors sparked by Jack Lemley’s distant hand grenade could soon grow into serious rumbles of discontent.
In their hands: the decision makers
Gordon Brown, chancellor
Brown would dearly love to be prime minister when the torch is lit at London 2012 but before then has a crucial role to play in clearing public funding for the Olympic-led regeneration project in the East End. Brown’s reluctance to fund any of the core Olympic spending was a huge hurdle to getting the bid started, but as PM-in-waiting he has come round to the project. Now he must loosen the purse strings.
Tessa Jowell, culture secretary
The Olympics minister’s future in a post-Blair cabinet may be uncertain but for now she is a key figure in the battle over what to do with the Olympic Stadium after 2012. Maintaining a community athletics facility will need public subsidy while accommodating a football team, sports minister Richard Caborn’s favoured scheme, will ruffle feathers in Olympic circles. Jowell is yet to declare her hand.
Ken Livingstone, mayor
London’s mayor backed the bid because it was expedient; he thought it would attract more investment to London. Now the games are coming he is keen to control the legacy programme. He has opposed a football club since the start and has promised £10m of funds to underwrite the Olympic facilities. Whether that will be enough for all the venues, and whether Londoners will stomach the council tax implications, remains to be seen.
David Higgins, chief executive, London Development Agency (ODA)
Responsible for the “heavy lifting” of building London 2012, the Australian helped build Sydney’s Olympic venues and has made a solid, unfussy start to the job of doing the same in London. His strategy of planning thoroughly before the ground has been broken has common sense on its side. Ongoing negotiations over the total budget and the stadium will be crucial to the success or failure of the project.
Paul Deighton, chief executive, London Olympic Organising Committee (Locog)
The former Goldman Sachs high-flyer is responsible for staging the games once the buildings are in place. Of his £2bn budget a major chunk is due to come from sponsorship revenue. Ticketing is also his responsibility. Another who has impressed, though biggest challenges to come.
Seb Coe, chairman, Locog
Coe is the face of London 2012 and the job of selling any unpopular decisions over the stadium to the International Olympic Committee will fall to him. The bid was a personal triumph and could be the springboard for him to take high office within the IOC. To do so he has to deliver on the high-minded promise he made in Singapore to transform London and sport in the UK.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/olympics2012/story/0,,1939462,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=11