The Olympic Stadium plan for the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games could cost much more than the original budgeted figure of 250 million pounds, and the plan to scale it down from 60,000 to 25,000 seats after the Games carries much risk, according to architects and consultants speaking at a Construction News Olympics conference.
One architect described the plan to reduce the stadium’s capacity to make it viable as London’s permanent athletics stadium as “fraught with risk”, reports the Telegraph.
Jay Parish, director of Arup Sport, the company that designed the Beijing 2008 Olympic stadium said, “it is not a perfect solution going down from 80,000 to 25,000. Nobody is going to appreciate a procurement process which ends up with a stadium which is not as good as Athens or such like”.
Andrew Williams, managing director of Franklin and Andrews said, “we need realism in budget control. If we want more than we have to pay for it. The building process needs proper documentation and straightforward contracts and we need to have the confidence not to buy below the real cost”.
Parish warned, “you can certainly build something for 250 million pounds but the question will be whether it can meet the aspirations of London and the UK. We will need to test the design”.
