Games village 'is from Soviet era'

Soviet style? First view of how part of the Olympic Village in Stratford will look

5 April 2012

The design of the athletes' village for the 2012 London Olympic Games resembles "Soviet-style blocks", a senior London Assembly member has warned.

Conservative Olympics spokesman Andrew Boff claimed the plans will create a "hostile environment" for residents.

Mr Boff, who campaigned for the Conservative candidacy for Mayor in the last election, said: "The 'village' was supposed to have been planned with the longterm legacy for east London in mind. But these Soviet-style blocks create a hostile environment and no place in which to bring up families.

"We don't want a return to the concrete jungles of the past that did so much to blight the lives of those who had to live in them, and ended up being blown up."

The £1 billion athletes' village will in fact be a collection of concrete high-rise apartment blocks and towers.

It will contain several 12-storey buildings and four 30-storey towers despite International Olympics Committee regulations that athletes can only be housed in buildings eight storeys high.

Olympic Delivery Authority chief executive David Higgins has also said that 3,300 flats will be built in Stratford for the games.

That would mean an average cost of more than £300,000 for building each two-bedroom flat.

But the basic cost of constructing an average two-bedroom flat is £120,000, according to the Building Cost Information Service.

The ODA said: "An updated outline planning application which received approval in April 2008 allows for two zones which will each have two buildings which may go up to 30 storeys - i.e. four in total."

It also said the flats will be retro-fitted after the Games for sale as legacy housing, which it expects to take two years.

But the authority refused to say how much it would cost to renovate so many flats and fit them with 3,300 kitchens,thought to cost £6,000 each.

Mr Boff said: "The whole village needs to be rethought quickly and radically."

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