DEVELOPMENT FOCUS
DEVELOPMENT FOCUS East Village
We take a look at the East Village development which has converted properties, originally built for the athletes at the 2012 Olympic Games, into affordable homes for residents of East London
East Village is London’s newest neighbourhood on the doorstep of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and at the heart of the new E20 postcode. Home to 23,000 athletes and officials during the London 2012 Games, what were once beds for athletes are now being transformed into 2,818 new homes for Londoners.
number of Olympic Villages have failed to deliver regeneration, sustainability and economic growth. With decaying sites such as at Moscow and Athens, a highly sceptical global audience has been waiting to assess Britain’s ability to deliver a sustainable residential legacy. As a result, transforming the Athletes’ Village into London’s first ‘legacy neighbourhood’ has been a highly visible, as well as highly complex project, with challenging deadlines, multiple stakeholders and intense political scrutiny and financial pressures. Now, as the first residents start to move into London’s newest and most exciting new neighbourhood, the opening of East Village in Stratford marks the latest chapter in the regeneration of East London.
A THE VISION In late 2011, following a
competitive tender process, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) signed contracts with Delancey and Qatari Diar for the purchase and long-term management of the Athletes’ Village upon completion of the London Games, in a deal worth £557 million.
Under the terms of the agreement, QDD would work with Triathlon Homes, who would manage the development and delivery of a range of affordable housing. In total, QDD and Triathlon committed to delivering 2,818 new homes, of which 1,379 would be run by Triathlon with the remaining 1,439 owned by QDD and developed for private rental housing. In addition, QDD took ownership of six adjacent development plots, with the potential for a further 2,000 new homes. East Village, was designed to respond directly to London’s crucial need for new housing, with the regeneration of Stratford as a core priority. The site, adjacent to the Olympic Park and Westfield Shopping Centre and well-connected to London’s transport network, also includes an Academy school, healthcare centre and retail units.
Anandh Owen, Delancey COO, said: “The plan was to operate a residential letting business called Get Living
14 | British Builder & Developer |
BritishBuilder.co.uk
London, offering all our apartments as rental accommodation. As a result, almost overnight we will become one of London’s largest private residential landlords. But we also wanted to be its best by listening to what Londoners want and offering them a new way of renting. To differentiate, we knew innovation would be the key.
So we designed an approach that would allow tenants to communicate directly with us as landlords, rather than through a third party agency. We would act as the triage for all maintenance requests, improving the quality and speed of service for tenants. This would make us more transparent and more efficient than other landlords and would significantly enhance the residents’ experience. It would also enable us to offer residents
rental properties with no fees or hidden costs. With no third party suppliers, our tenants’ only costs would be rent. This promises to revolutionise the rental pricing model."
THE CONSULTATION East Village is part of a much wider regeneration project – the Stratford City Masterplan. Conceived and submitted long before the Olympic bid, the Masterplan was one of the largest planning applications ever submitted in London, at a time when Stratford was characterised by post-industrial decline, pollution and poverty, and desperately in need of regeneration.
As a result, East Village is one of the most significant new urban developments in the UK today, a key element in the transformation of east London
Inside a showroom property
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