Olympic legacy chief sacked after one year

Matthew Beard12 April 2012

The man in charge of delivering a legacy in the Olympic Park is being dismissed after just over a year in the post.

Urban regeneration expert Tom Russell was tasked with shaping the post-Games use of the 2012 Park and sports venues for the London Development Agency. He was appointed as group director of Olympic legacy by Ken Livingstone in January last year.

Mr Russell was widely acclaimed for leading the regeneration work around the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games. But his blueprint for the post-Games transformation of the £7billion Olympic Park has been overshadowed by concerns about the stadium.

Mr Russell's recent candour about the stadium's inability to pay its way because it could not attract a top football club has caused irritation at City Hall and with Government.

It was Mr Russell who also admitted that the only way a Premier League football club could be attracted to the site would be for the stadium to be demolished after the Games at a cost of at least £300million. Seeking an anchor tenant, Mr Russell brought West Ham, Leyton Orient and several Premiership rugby clubs to the negotiating table. But all were deterred by an athletics track incorporated into the design that was presented to Mr Russell as a fait accompli before his appointment.

The stadium will be reduced in capacity from 80,000 to 25,000 after 2012 with an estimated pricetag of £547million making it the most expensive venue of its size in the world.

As chief executive of the New East Manchester Regeneration Company, Mr Russell oversaw the successful conversion of Manchester's Commonwealth Games sports facilities.

Mr Russell, who began his career with Hammersmith and Fulham council, will serve out his three months' notice but has no plans to work on the Olympic project.

He said he was disappointed to be leaving. The task of attracting investment to the Olympic park passes to Boris Johnson's recently formed legacy company headed by Baroness Ford, a former bank executive. She will work within a "legacy masterplan framework" devised by Mr Russell which sets out a 30-year plan for thousands of new jobs and homes in an around the Lower Lea Valley.

Mr Russell said despite the focus on the stadium, the Olympic media centre had been a more challenging part of his regeneration brief because of the legacy pledge to create thousands of jobs for Hackney locals.

He told the Standard: "The stadium has been a difficult issue and I understand why the focus has been on that - athletics is the blue riband event and the iconic venue. The proposals appear counter-intuitive and people are bound to ask why there's not football there. The approach we are taking is bound to be questioned because nobody has done it before. But if we get a school in there and sports governing bodies it will be held up as a model."

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