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Tony P
alfiehammer
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    The final cost of the O.S

    alfiehammer
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    Post  alfiehammer Fri 19 Jun 2015, 4:49 pm

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    Crikey we done well out of this, the only bit I'm not sure about is Newham council getting 100,000 tickets per year???
    The overall bill for the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, largely met by taxpayers, has soared to more than £700m before West Ham United move in as tenants next year.

    In a move likely to reignite the row over the amount of public money used to make the stadium suitable for both football and athletics, the London Legacy Development Corporation has confirmed the total cost of the transformation at £272m.


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    Originally the Olympic Stadium was priced up at £280m in the London 2012 bid book before the price tag rose to £429m. The latest announcement, following the last of the contracts being signed, takes the total cost of the stadium to £701m.

    In April the Guardian revealed that the LLDC had opened itself up to a decade of potential challenges over whether the deal broke European Commission state aid rules by not applying for prenotification.

    The final confirmed cost of the transformation, towards which West Ham will make a £15m contribution on top of the £2.5m they will pay annually for a 99-year lease, is significantly higher than the £154m originally announced when the deal with West Ham was agreed.

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    The LLDC argues that it never announced a final budget for the transformation and that the £154m figure was the cost of its initial contract with the contractor Balfour Beatty.

    The final cost takes the 54,000-seat stadium, which will host the Anniversary Games next month and Rugby World Cup matches in September, towards the £780m spent on Wembley.

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    Without allowing for inflation, the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff cost £121m in 1999 and Arsenal’s similar-sized Emirates Stadium cost £390m in 2006.

    However, the LLDC would argue that the Olympic Stadium project was unusually challenging in engineering terms and involved effectively entirely rebuilding the existing structure.

    The saga of the stadium’s legacy has been long and tortuous. The initial plan was to remove the upper tiers of the stadium and scale it back to a modest 25,000-seat bowl after the Games.

    But the coalition government and Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, urged a rethink in 2010, reasoning that it was folly to in effect knock it down and that only football could provide a sustainable future. Following a bitter battle with Tottenham Hotspur, a deal was eventually agreed with West Ham that later collapsed under legal challenge.

    Following another tender process, the club were awarded a 99-year lease to share the stadium with other tenants including UK Athletics. The operator of the Stade de France was recently appointed to handle the running of the stadium and to book concerts and sporting events to supplement income.

    Last year the LLDC admitted that the cost had risen to £193.9m as a result of difficulties that Balfour Beatty was experiencing with the world’s largest cantilevered roof.

    The LLDC said that the deals it had signed with West Ham, who will in effect be the main tenants during the football season, and British Athletics, which is entitled to use for the whole of July, would ensure that it would not require continuing subsidy from the taxpayer.

    “We have invested in transforming a temporary athletics venue into a permanent world-class multiuse arena that has a secure and long-term sustainable future,” said the LLDC’s chief executive, David Goldstone. “This has required a significant amount of work and innovative engineering solutions.

    “Alongside the transformation work the deals signed with British Athletics and West Ham United and the appointment of a stadium operator ensures the stadium will pay its way and not require any continuing subsidy from the taxpayer.”


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    The largest chunk of funding for the transformation comes from a one-off settlement of £148.8m from the exchequer in 2010. On top of that Newham council has provided £40m, West Ham £15m, almost £40m comes from the original £9.3bn budget for the Olympics, a further £25m from the government. UK Athletics has invested £1m and the London Marathon Charitable Trust has provided £3.5m.

    In return for investing £40m for a share in the special purpose vehicle that owns the stadium, Newham council has been guaranteed access to the stadium and up to 100,000 tickets a year to West Ham matches.

    West Ham are set to move into the stadium, which will have 21,000 moveable seats designed to make it more suitable for football, at the start of the 2016-17 season.

    The club’s vice-chair, Karren Brady, who has sold out of some of the executive box offerings, has promised cut-price season tickets in order to fill the ground and make Premier League football more affordable.

    Johnson blamed a lack of planning by his predecessors for the cost of transforming the stadium into a 54,000-seat multipurpose arena.

    Concerned about the potential for delays and without a definite commitment from a football club, the Olympic board decided in 2007 to press ahead with plans to build the stadium with a demountable top tier that could be removed afterwards to bring the capacity down to 25,000.

    “A very bad call was made when those in charge at the time backed a stadium construction plan that would leave the Olympic Park with a much smaller, mouldering and tumbleweed ridden arena following the Games,” Johnson said. “Following that plan would have literally torn the heart out of the park and put at risk the incredible economic regeneration we are now seeing in east London.

    “Our remedy offered long-term sustainable investment in order to protect an iconic stadium that Londoners took to their hearts, and which is now set to be home to almost every conceivable sport, concert or community event for decades to come.

    “We’ve created a knockout venue that will drive and sustain thousands of jobs, where we’ve ensured that a hefty share of the profits will be paid back into the taxpayers coffers and which provides a genuine Olympic legacy for our city.”

    Tony P
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    Post  Tony P Sat 20 Jun 2015, 12:45 pm

    An irate Spurs fan was ranting at me last night about how unfair it is that we have got the stadium for £15m + £2.5m per year rent, and that they had to pay for a completely new stadium. I just smiled at him smugly and agreed
    Campo
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    Post  Campo Sat 20 Jun 2015, 1:03 pm

    Had the spuds and the O's not stuck their oars in we would be paying much much more
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    Post  Jiggs Sat 20 Jun 2015, 1:54 pm

    Great response Tony. Its jealousy plain and simple  rofl
    westhamonkey
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    Post  westhamonkey Sat 20 Jun 2015, 8:50 pm


    I'm still not happy with the notion of us being renters rather than owning something... but when you look at the 'costs' - it's certainly the ideal situation (so long as expenditure of capital is your only motivation factor).

    People can piss and moan about how much this has cost... and it's a complete farce... just take the initial bid price and what it eventually ends up costing... in any other walk of life people would be shitcanned from their jobs for being so inaccurate... in construction... no one gives a shit.

    Then look around the world at the number of bullshit Olympic projects that are just empty rusting relics and are just rotting away after tens and hundreds of millions have been spent on them.

    Look just down the street... the 02 Arena... another bullshit publicly funded project that had one goal and then was just going to rot until a private consortium bought it - again.. taxpayer money being 'utilized' by private entities to their own benefit.

    anyone who wanted the olympics in the UK, or bought a ticket to an event or watched it on TV is just as guilty as the politicians and the Seb Coe's and all the other ineffective motherfuckers who put the whole thing together with no exit strategy that ever stood any chance of working.

    not until people wake up and get off their arses and actually hold politicians accountable for their shitshow policies, is there even the slightest chance that any of this will ever change.
    Tony P
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    Post  Tony P Sat 20 Jun 2015, 11:36 pm

    Who cares? It is a 99 year lease. We will be pushing up the daisies well before then anyway
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    Post  westhamonkey Mon 22 Jun 2015, 5:26 am


    indeed... but the way lifespans are extending, I'm sure there'll be more than one Hammer who watches the first game at the OS and is around tho see what happens when the lease runs out
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    Post  alfiehammer Thu 06 Aug 2015, 8:49 am

    It's back in the news again: 

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    West Ham United will have many of the running costs met by the taxpayer when they move to the £700m Olympic Stadium next year, the BBC has learnt.
    Critics say it means the Premier League club will get their new home virtually rent free.
    [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] to occupy the stadium, which was built for the London 2012 Olympics, and are expected to move from their Upton Park ground in August 2016.
    The public authority that owns the stadium, the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), has revealed some details of its rental agreement with the club in response to a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
    Much of the contract between LLDC and West Ham, which has been seen by the BBC, is redacted.
    But it does show that a large number of "facilities and services" will be paid for by the grantor - ie the taxpayer - and not the club.
    These include the cost of stadium utilities, security, maintaining the pitch, and even the goalposts and corner flags.
    The BBC understands other overheads that could also be paid by the LLDC include the cost of stewarding and policing on match days, which amounts to many hundreds of thousands of pounds for other Premier League clubs.
    Two separate football business experts told the BBC the value of the services amounts to between £1.4m and £2.5m a year.
    West Ham, who received more than £76m in prize money for finishing 12th in the Premier League last season, are understood to be paying approximately £2m to £2.5m a year in rent.
    The final cost of the O.S  _84698794_etihad_pa
    Manchester City pay all their overheads on top of £4m rent a year at their former Commonwealth Games venue
    Chris Bryant, Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, called on the government to publish all the details of the deal or he will join calls for a full public inquiry.
    "To all intents and purposes, this is a contract which gives West Ham the stadium at a peppercorn rent at most or, to be honest, for no rent whatsoever," Bryant told the BBC.
    "The question is, if we were able to see the fuller facts and figures, which I think we should, would we be even more angry?"
    West Ham said: "Without us the stadium would lose money. The suggestion we are getting the stadium rent free is categorically wrong - we are more than paying our way.
    "Our agreement with the LLDC will see West Ham make a substantial capital contribution towards the conversion works of a stadium on top of a multi-million pound annual usage fee, a share of food and catering sales, plus provide extra value to the naming rights agreement.
    "Our presence underwrites the multi-use legacy of the stadium and our contribution alone will pay back more than the cost of building and converting the stadium over the course of our tenancy."
    The LLDC has not disclosed all the details of its agreement with West Ham.
    It says it is restricted by financial confidentiality because of commercially sensitive figures, much to the frustration of those who feel the full terms should be revealed in the public interest.
    Bryant said: "We're talking about such enormous sums of money that I think most British taxpayers would want to know what the deal was that was signed on their behalf, and that's the first hurdle that the government has got to cross.
    "If it doesn't come through then I think the demands for a full public inquiry will grow and that's the point at which I'll start to want to join in those."
    [th]

    West Ham statement

    [/th]
    "Without us the stadium would lose money. The suggestion we are getting the stadium rent free is wrong - we are more than paying our way.
    "There is absolutely no chance tickets will be dumped on the market. We need to move as we have simply outgrown the Boleyn Ground.
    "It defies logic that David Gold and David Sullivan will sell the club. They have made it clear they would like to pass their shares on to their children.
    "They were also happy to include a clause that would return a substantial sum of money to the taxpayer should they sell the club following our move to Stratford."
    When the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] was revealed in June, West Ham's contribution of £15m towards the £272m conversion costs already looked like a bargain for the club - especially at a time when Premier League clubs are about to benefit from a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
    But they now appear to be getting an even better deal, raising serious questions over the way the stadium was used after London 2012, and whether there should be more transparency over the arrangement.
    Barry Hearn, chairman of Leyton Orient when they [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] in 2014 against West Ham's move to the Olympic Stadium, said: "This is about the Olympic Stadium which has now been effectively transferred to a commercial enterprise for virtually nothing. Something doesn't smell right.
    "It doesn't take a genius to work out, in today's world of Premiership football, that [the running costs] actually come to more than £2.5m a year."
    That West Ham will not be paying those costs themselves is in contrast to the situation at Manchester City, who pay all their overheads - on top of rent of about £4m a year agreed with Manchester City Council - for the Etihad Stadium, which was also initially funded by taxpayers for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
    It has been reported that Chelsea and Tottenham may have to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] a year to play at Wembley if they temporarily use the national stadium while they redevelop their grounds.
    The City of Manchester Stadium was always designed with football in mind as the sole post-Commonwealth Games use for the venue. That meant it cost £42m to convert, compared to the £272m bill that the Olympic Stadium's conversion has required - £35m over budget.
    "They built the wrong stadium," Hearn said.
    Asked why a multi-use stadium was not designed and built in the beginning, LLDC chief executive David Goldstone said: "I think that wasn't possible at the time.
    "There wasn't an offer of a football tenant and, without football, it wouldn't have worked.
    The final cost of the O.S  _84682249_gettyimages-114193708
    David Gold (left) and David Sullivan have owned West Ham since 2010
    "It would have been a real leap to make that sort of decision, so I'm very happy those decisions that were made were the right ones.
    "We can look forward now and say how can we best secure the long-term future so that it can be multi-use, it can pay its own way, and I think that's what we've done with this stadium."
    The stadium was designed to be converted into a 25,000-seat athletics facility after the Olympics. However, it later became apparent that having a Premier League football club would be far more financially viable, with Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham left to fight it out as the two main bidders.
    Spurs wanted to remove the running track, but that was seen as politically unacceptable when London's 2012 bid team had promised the International Olympic Committee that an athletics legacy would be maintained at the stadium.
    West Ham were, therefore, seen as the only option, leaving them in a very strong bargaining position. The [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] for both football and athletics.
    Bryant said: "It looks to me as if, because there was only ever one player that anybody was really interested in, that Boris Johnson (former chair of the LLDC) bent over backwards to accommodate them and West Ham ended up with a deal which is astoundingly good for them."
    Exactly how good this "astounding" deal is remains unclear while so many pages of the published contract have been blacked out.
    One of the key unknowns is how much money the taxpayer would receive as a 'claw-back' if West Ham were sold, at a profit, in the future.
    [th]

    European Commission investigations relating to 'State Aid'

    [/th]
    The European Commission is currently investigating four complaints of alleged 'State Aid' contributions involving 12 professional football clubs in the Netherlands and Spain.
    Seven Spanish clubs are involved: Barcelona, Real Madrid, Valencia, Athletic Bilbao, Hercules, Elche and Osasuna
    Five Dutch clubs are involved: PSV Eindhoven, Willem II, NEC, FC Den Bosch and MVV
    The complaints range from possible tax privileges, loans given by the state-owned banks to a club, and the use of public resources to benefit certain teams
    While owners David Gold and David Sullivan insist West Ham is not for sale, they have expressed a desire to sell some shares and valued the club at £400m in December, four times its value when they arrived in 2010.
    "It's highly likely that it will be sold to foreign investors," says Prof Simon Chadwick from Coventry University Business School. "If it's still in English ownership by 2020, I'll be very surprised."
    West Ham's deal with the LLDC could come under scrutiny should a relevant party make a complaint to the European Commission, under EU competition law relating to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] contributions.
    "State aid rules in Europe are there for a good reason, which is that no government should be giving financial advantage of whatever kind to one commercial player over another commercial player," Bryant explained.
    "These are very real issues that are already affecting other football clubs in Europe.
    "If it were subsequently proven that there had been illegal state aid provided to West Ham through this deal, then West Ham would end up having to pay back any potential financial advantage that might have accrued to them, which could run to the best part of half a billion."
    However, Goldstone said: "I'm not losing sleep about whether somebody else is going to make a challenge into something that's already been looked at and considered and isn't being enquired into by the appropriate body any further.
    The final cost of the O.S  _84682252_gettyimages-164276796
    Boris Johnson is accused of 'bending over backwards' to accommodate West Ham's move to the Olympic Stadium
    "West Ham, I believe, have got a good deal, but we have got a really good solution to make sure that we bring billions of pounds of economic benefit into the area.
    "We have an arrangement with West Ham where they pay a fee for using the stadium, effectively serviced, and that's the basic structure of the agreement."
    The LLDC also points to the security gained by having an anchor tenant on a 99-year lease, and insists this will avoid the kind of 'white elephants' that blight Olympic parks in former host cities such as Barcelona, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
    The stadium will only be given over to athletics for one month each year, but it will also host 10 annual community sports events, a new floodlit community running track and a training and education centre.
    Boris Johnson declined a request to be interviewed by the BBC. However, a spokesperson for the London Major said: "The Olympic Stadium remains in public ownership and will be capable of hosting a variety of other events and sports.
    "The mayor has secured long-term sustainable investment in order to protect an iconic stadium that Londoners took to their hearts, and which is now set to be home to almost every conceivable sport, concert or community event for decades to come.
    "That has resulted in the creation of a venue that will drive and sustain thousands of jobs, contribute to over £3bn of wider economic benefit, where a share of the profits will be paid back into the taxpayers coffers and which provides a genuine Olympic legacy for London."
    The Olympic Stadium: How the Hammers Struck Gold will be shown on [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] at 19:00 BST on Thursday, 6 August and available nationally on the BBC iPlayer shortly afterwards.

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    Last edited by alfiehammer on Thu 06 Aug 2015, 9:04 am; edited 2 times in total (Reason for editing : The full article)
    RichB
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    Post  RichB Thu 06 Aug 2015, 8:57 am

    Unfortunately this one will keep rumbling on, it's the new thing to knock the Hammers with after everyone was begining to forget the Tevez affair.
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    Post  westhamonkey Thu 06 Aug 2015, 1:56 pm

    RichB wrote:Unfortunately this one will keep rumbling on, it's the new thing to knock the Hammers with after everyone was begining to forget the Tevez affair.  

    I agree with you that this one will "run and run"

    but the problem isn't us... this was a fiasco from the get-go and the government and all those idiots like Seb Coe who refused to see the blindingly obvious (that athletics is crap and in no way financially viable) have left the public with a huge money pit - just like they always do around the world with olympic (miss)adventures...

    Just look at the O2... was gonna be a multi-million dollar flea market until they did the right thing and sold it to a company who has now changed it into a hugely successful commercial venture.

    As much as Barry Hearn, the cunts at White Hart Lane and a bunch of asshole politicians wanted to piss and moan about it - the best option for the OS was to sell it to us and have us own it and assume all responsibility for it.

    Would have cost us a shit ton of money but ultimately everyone would have been dealt with fairly.

    What we have now is the worst possible situation whereby we sit in it but it's not ours, we don't own it so can't avoid shitty concerts or scout meetings being put in there... we've had to compromise on seating arrangements and a host of other things to 'suit' a bunch of 'suits' who think athletics is cool...

    and we don't pay for the up keep or maintenance of it and the poor taxpayer picks up the bill.


    none of this was West Ham's doing or fault... but we'll be the focus of the attention

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