Barbara Cassani, head of London’s bid for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, said she was hunting for venues to make sure the 2012 Games venues are distributed throughout London, but Alexandra Palace and the Greenwich Old Royal Observatory emerge as potential venues for the bid, reports the Evening Standard.
Alexandra Palace in north London could be the venue for volleyball or basketball. It is being used as a conference centre and has a history of staging boxing matches.
Both venues are scenic and would be perfect for television, as well as providing added value in historical terms. The first live BBC television pictures were broadcast from Alexandra Palace in 1936.
The final master plan for the Games will not be published until later this year.
Meanwhile Cassani said London must avoid the mistakes made during England’s bid for the 2006 World Cup and the Millennium Dome project if it is to win the 2012 bid. She said she was confident the bid could overcome the memory of those high-profile flops.
With the bid centred on the Lower Lea Valley, the Guardian reports that the prospect of venues in the north and west of the city hosting events will raise concerns that the transport infrastructure could become stretched.
Cassani said that even with concession from the transport authorities, including closing roads to non-Olympic traffic and running additional Tubes, moving athletes across London could pose problems.
She said, “we have to be mindful of the fact that the Olympic village is going to be in the east, and that could be problematic for venues in the west. This could pose problems for the tennis. We would love to play the tennis at Wimbledon, but getting from the Lower Lea Valley to Wimbledon could be very difficult”.
A London 2012 Olympics would bring an estimated 9,000 new jobs, and 4,000 new homes as well as massive infrastructure and transport improvements.
