The London 2012 Olympic mascot Wenlock(left) and the Paralympic mascot Mandeville
And yet, this summer, 4 billion people from around the world will be transfixed on this neighborhood, a once industrial wasteland now home to London’s elegant new Olympic Park.
The sleek architecture and vast infrastructure are reshaping this region from one of London’s poorest to one of its most progressive. Nearly 9 million visitors will see the transformation firsthand in late July, when the XXX Summer Olympic Games get under way.
John Betjeman statue & Olympic rings at St Pancras International train station in London
So instead of visiting London’s Olympic venues this summer, with hundreds of thousands of others, I checked them out in the fall — as finishing touches were being made to the arenas and stadiums, green spaces and train stations.
Now, I can hardly wait until late July, when I’ll watch my favorite events — on TV — and be able to say: I saw that. I’ve been there.
An interactive map of London venues for the 2012 Summer Olympics
Olympic Park is center of action
While the events of the London Olympics will be spread across the region — tennis at Wimbledon, rowing at Windsor, horse jumping at Greenwich Park — the heart of the games will be the Olympic Park, a 500-acre space about eight miles northeast of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.
This is where the opening and closing ceremonies will be staged, where track-and-field and swimming events will take place, where Olympic athletes will stay, and where the Olympic flame will burn from Thursday, July 27, to Sunday, Aug. 12.
Decades of downturn in Straford, London's poor East End, has given way to the Olympics
This summer, the attention will be for a different reason: Thousands of the world’s most impressive athletes will gather to determine who is the very best in each sport.
Beach volleyball at the Horse Guards Parade
An aerial view of The Olympic Park in London
• Olympic Stadium(1), which will hold opening and closing ceremonies as well as track-and-field events, is an engineering marvel, with 80,000 seats –– 55,000 of which will be removed after the games to give the stadium greater utility in its post-Olympics life. Food vendors will be set up outside the stadium to eliminate the need for costly kitchen facilities; temporary restrooms will be self-contained in recycled shipping containers. “There’s nothing there that doesn’t need to be,” said Julianne Marriott, a guide with the Olympic Development Authority, which leads weekend tours of the park.
Inside of the Aquatic Centre, designed by Pritzker Architecture Winner Zaha Hadid, in London
• Two other buildings of note: the Velodrome(3), another visual stunner, will host track cycling events (it’s been dubbed the “Pringle” for its potato-chip-like curving roof); and the Basketball Arena(4), a completely temporary facility that will be dismantled after the games. Why? “Because the British are rubbish at basketball,” said Victoria Herriott, who leads walking tours around the perimeter of the park. “The only sport that makes any money in England is soccer.”
The arena may be sent to Rio de Janeiro for use in the 2016 games.
The
ArcelorMittal Orbit, a teetering tower planned for the 2012 Olympic
Games, is set to become the largest work of public art in the United
Kingdom
There’s no function in this piece at all — save giving VIPs a place to have a drink and survey the park. It’s designed to draw visitors to the area after the games have finished. “You have to have more than stadiums to bring visitors here,” said Herriott. And though she initially didn’t care for its design, she said, “It’s grown on me.”
She told our group to delay judgment, reminding us that even the Eiffel Tower was initially panned by Parisians.
Planning for use after the Olympics
The future use of space was a theme brought up again and again during the two tours I took of the park in November. Indeed, the Olympic Park Legacy Committee’s entire purpose is to ensure that the investment does not turn into one massive white elephant.
Lasting signs of improvement to the region are already apparent in every direction: The River Lea, which flows south through the park to the Thames, has been scrubbed, as has surrounding marshland.
There was a lot to clean up.
This used to be London’s industrial heartland, where chemical plants, scrap yards, slaughterhouses and “anything smelly” was located, according to Marriott, because the area was downwind from where wealthy Londoners lived (and still live). The Germans bombed the area heavily during World War II. And then last summer, rioters threatened to perpetuate the abuse, spreading their looting to several East London neighborhoods (the bulk of disorder occurred in the North London neighborhood of Tottenham, following the police killing of an unarmed man there on Aug. 4).
In the eight days I spent touring London, the only time I felt at all unsafe was as I wandered through this neighborhood, mostly because the place seemed so deserted. I got turned around as I searched for a subway station after a tour, and there was no one nearby to ask for directions.
That, no doubt, will change.
Plans are in the works for the addition of 2,800 new homes on the parkland — which will be renamed Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park after the games — plus a retirement community, new school and more. British Prime Minister David Cameron has talked about taking advantage of the technology being invested at the media/broadcast center and turning the entire area into a private-sector tech hub when the games are finished.
“This isn’t about just two weeks of sport,” said Herriott.
Four thousand newly planted trees will give the area a true parklike look; 30 new pedestrian bridges will transport visitors across the canals and waterways that cut through the land.
Despite all the newness, a bit of history is still on display. Herriott’s tour led us past Three Mill Island, a historic former mill that now functions as London’s largest film studio. On the afternoon of our walk, auditions were being conducted for the games’ opening ceremonies, which are being overseen by English filmmaker Danny Boyle, the director of “Slumdog Millionaire.”
Herriott predicted it would be less elaborate than the over-the-top, four-hour affair of 2008 in Beijing that featured 15,000 performers. “I’m sure, with our quirky British style, it will be spectacular,” she said.
She also predicted it would be relatively concise, especially if the queen is in attendance, as she is expected to be. “She can only stay up so late,” Herriott said of the monarch, who turns 86 in the spring.
After the opening ceremonies, the stadium will be shuttered for a week until the track-and-field events, one of the games’ big draws, get started, on Friday, Aug. 3.
Largest McDonald’s in the world
Another big draw: the world’s largest McDonald’s, which is being built at Olympic Park. The 32,000-square-foot hamburger palace will seat up to 1,500. McDonald’s, a longtime Olympics sponsor, will have four restaurants at the park, a fact that has prompted some jeers from healthy-eating advocates. Other sponsors include Cadbury, Visa, BP and Coca-Cola.
“If you turn up in a Burger King or Pepsi T-shirt, will you be asked to turn it inside out?” asked Herriott, and it wasn’t clear whether she was joking or not.
Private investment is flooding the neighborhoods adjacent to Olympic Park as well. Europe’s largest shopping mall, Westfield Stratford City, opened last fall within walking distance of the park. Inside: 300 stores spread across four floors, including some familiar names to American shoppers: Foot Locker, Forever 21 and Krispy Kreme; as well as more authentically British options: Marks & Spencer, Twinings and Dorothy Perkins.
We spent the most time at John Lewis, a U.K. department store that offers an official Olympics store on the third floor. I was prepared to spend a big percentage of my souvenir allowance here, but couldn’t get excited about those odd-looking Olympic mascots — one-eyed creatures Wenlock and Mandeville — decorating much of the official merchandise. I was much more impressed with the store’s floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Olympic Park and all of East London.
Worries about transit and security
Stratford, with its two train stations, will be the gateway to the Olympics for a majority of visitors. All event-goers will receive a free one-day transportation card with their tickets — and those cards are likely to be used: There will be no car parking at Olympic Park for able-bodied visitors, according to Herriott.
Though its location is off the tourist track, the park isn’t hard to get to; it is served by 10 public transit lines. It’s a 20-minute ride from central London. Visitors coming from continental Europe via the Eurostar high-speed train can connect to Stratford from St. Pancras International railway station in seven minutes, thanks to the new high-speed Javelin line.
Is it enough? Londoners aren’t sure. On busy days, more than 100,000 visitors will descend on Olympic Park, stressing an already overworked public transportation system.
Security is the other issue causing concern.
The British government announced last month the addition of 13,500 military personnel to the thousands of private guards and local police who will patrol Olympic venues. In addition, the Royal Navy’s largest ship, the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean, will be based on the Thames in nearby Greenwich, just a few miles from Olympic Park.
Still, said Herriott, “They only have to get lucky once.”
No Londoner can forget the week in early July 2005, when the city got word that it would host the 2012 Summer Games, besting bids from Paris, New York, Madrid and Moscow. The very day after the announcement, terrorists set off four bombs in the London Underground, killing 52.
That was more than six years ago, and the city has been spared any similarly serious incidents.
Today, there’s more excitement than apprehension. Main events have been sold out for months, and taxpaying Londoners, who have largely paid for the games, are grousing mostly because they weren’t awarded more tickets.
Herriott told the Brits on our tour that the lack of a ticket is no reason not to share in the excitement of the Olympics this summer.
Several events — including the marathon, road cycling and triathlon — can be viewed for free and don’t require a ticket. “There’s no excuse to say you haven’t seen an Olympic event,” she told us.
And she almost had me convinced.
Visiting London for Olympics
This summer, London will become the only city to host the Olympics three times. The British capital first welcomed the world’s top athletes in 1908, after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius caused planned host Rome to pull out. London hosted again in 1948, the first Olympics following a 12-year hiatus caused by World War II.
London also was instrumental in the creation of the Paralympic Games, the competition for athletes with physical disabilities that immediately follows the Olympics. The precursor to the Paralympics, initially held for injured servicemen, was first held in London in 1948. This year’s Paralympics run Wednesday, Aug. 29, through Sunday, Sept. 9.
Tickets to events: Ticket sales began last year, and many events are sold out. Some early rounds of competition, however, still have availability, including table tennis, handball, weightlifting and volleyball. CoSport is the official ticket sales agent in the United States; or, take your chances in the resale market.
For travelers with deep pockets, CoSport has packages available that include tickets to top events, plus hospitality passes. For example, a package including a ticket to the gymnastics finals (on Sunday, Aug. 5), tickets to shooting and boxing events the following day and a hospitality pass was available for $2,500.
Remember, too, that some events are free and don’t require a ticket — including the marathon, triathlon and road cycling.
Tour the area: The Olympic Delivery Authority offers free bus tours inside Olympic Park grounds on weekends. Reservations are required, sometimes far in advance. For information: london2012.com or 011-44-300-2012-001.
Blue Badge Guides offer several different walking tours near Olympic Park (these tours are not allowed to go inside the park). Price for the basic, two-hour tour is 9 pounds (about $14), cash only. Information: tourguides2012.co.uk.
If you’re not interested in a formal tour but want to look at the Olympic grounds, check out the View Tube, a kind of informal visitors center with great views of Olympic Park. The View Tube, in a recycled shipping container, is located along the Greenway, a 4-mile-long walk-and-bike trail that travels along the southern perimeter of Olympic Park. For information: theviewtube.co.uk.
Getting to England: Travel to London during the Olympic weeks is expected to be a headache — and an expensive one at that. Round-trip flights to London Heathrow in late July from Cleveland are running about $1,400 (and up). Travel experts do not expect that figure to go down. Best advice: If you’re sure you want to go, book soon.
Where to stay: First, the good news: The city still has plenty of rooms available during the Olympics. Now the bad: Expect to pay a premium for even a modest room. London & Partners, the city’s tourism bureau, has a search function that shows availability across the region during late July and early August.
Remember, too, that price gouging during big events sometimes backfires and hotels find themselves lowering rates as the event nears. If you’re willing to take that risk, you might find better deals closer to summer.
The closest hotels to Olympic Park include three at Westfield Stratford Centre mall: a Premier Inn; and a Holiday Inn and Staybridge Suites, both of which are opening this summer. More information: london2012.com
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