“The problem here is the stadium was never designed for football,”
said Boff. “We’ve seen the results of really bad planning; really
shockingly, awful decisions made during the planning stage before the OPLC
was around. They have been handed a real mess to sort out.”
The need for under-soil heating was highlighted when a Six Nations rugby match
between France and Ireland was called off earlier this month because the
Stade de France in Paris lacked such a facility.
Premier League rules state that a club must have “an under-soil heating
system or some adequate system of pitch protection to the reasonable
satisfaction of the board” to stage matches.
“All those extra additional costs – including extending the roof to cover
more of the seats, additional VIP lounges that are essential for the stadium
– will now come down to the taxpayer rather than the tenant,” Boff
said.
West Ham, who were relegated from the Premier League last season, were
supposed to pay for the stadium’s transformation after being selected as the
preferred long-term tenant of the stadium.
However, the Government scrapped that deal in October after challenges to the
bidding process.
About £35m has already been earmarked under the Olympic budget to downsize the
stadium from an 80,000 to a 60,000-seat facility after the games.
One certainty is that the running track will remain in the stadium regardless
of the outcome, with London awarded the 2017 World Athletics Championships.
“It is a mess, the stadium, because it’s a stadium designed with an
athletics legacy that they are trying to shoehorn football into,” Boff
said. “I would not think a Premier League team would want anything
other than a stadium designed for football. A Premier League team cannot
survive in the Olympics Stadium as it is. They decided too late to invite
bids from football clubs.
“They are trying to cobble together a legacy when they should have
planned it years ago.”
Sixteen companies have expressed an interest in bidding for the use of the
stadium after the Olympics, including West Ham, and have until March 23 to
submit formal bids. The winning bid will be announced in May, but the
stadium won’t be ready until 2014.
