Post by fretslider on Aug 13, 2011 6:31:47 GMT -5
London's Olympic Village cost in the region of £1.1bn.
Glad tidings of great joy, the Olympic Village has been sold to the Qatari ruling family's property company in a deal that leaves us £275m out of pocket. Qatari Diar, the oil-rich state's investment arm, and UK property developer Delancey Estates teamed up to buy the athletes' village next to the Olympic Park in east London for £557m. After the games, the village will be converted into a neighbourhood with 2,818 homes, including 1,000 family homeswith three or four bedrooms. The rest of the properties range from studio flats to five-bedroom apartments. The area will also include a school with 1,800 places for children aged three to 19, shops, bars, clinics and parks. The Olympic Delivery Authority, which sold the site, had already sold 1,379 of the residences in the 11 blocks of the athletes' village to Triathlon Homes for £268m in 2009. They will become affordable housing such as shared ownership or socially rented apartments.
At the moment, the apartments in the village do not have kitchens as athletes will eat at dining halls. They will be fitted out for long-term residential use after the games when kitchens will be added and new floors put in. The first tenants are due to move in in late 2013.
Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, hailed the sale as a "fantastic deal that will give taxpayers a great return and shows how we are securing a legacy from London's Games. The village cost £1.1bn to build, but the ODA insisted it never expected to recoup building costs". So that's alright, then. It's "a fantastic deal that will give taxpayers a great return". Like hell it does. The circular running fest will be costing at least £600 million per day - assuming the final bill is £9.3 bn.
The Qatari property developer has been embroiled in a high-profile row over the £3bn Chelsea Barracks scheme, which recently received the green light two years after Prince Charles poked his nose in the public sphere, intervening over plans for the 13-acre site. In June 2009, the developer withdrew its planning application after the Prince of Wales wrote to its chairman, the prime minister of Qatar, saying his "heart sank" when he saw the modernist design by Lord Rogers. Qatari Diar's then-partner, the CPC Group owned by the Monaco-based property developer Christian Candy, launched a high court action to claim £81m in compensation after the scheme's collapse. The architects behind the revised plans are Dixon Jones, Squire and Partners and Kim Wilkie.
"In a historic judgment, Vos found that Qatari Diar, a property development company wholly owned by Qatar's royal family, changed its plans for the prime London site as a result of the prince's direct complaint to the emir that he did not like the designs by the firm of Lord Rogers, a leading modernist architect with whom he has clashed on several occasions. Charles had voiced opposition to the plan for more than 500 homes on the former Ministry of Defence site at a teatime meeting with the emir at Clarence House last spring, and also wrote to the prime minister of Qatar attacking the designs as part of a "gigantic experiment with the very soul of our capital city". He said it should be scrapped in favour of something more "old-fashioned" like the buildings in "Bath or 18th-century Edinburgh".
The judge ruled that by withdrawing the application shortly after his intervention, Qatari Diar breached its contract with co-developer CPC Group, owned by Monaco-based businessman Christian Candy, clearing the way for a claim for costs and damages. However Vos did not support Candy's claim for an early payout of £68.5m, which would have come if planning consent had been granted. He said that Qatari Diar was "caught between a rock and a hard place" as a result of Prince Charles's impassioned demands for an alternative scheme and had been "doing the best it could in difficult circumstances" involving "diplomatic and political implications" to continue the planning process as normal.
The judgment exposed the prince's powerful influence and how he was prepared to go to great lengths to lobby not only fellow royals but also to consider putting pressure on the mayor, Westminister city council and the media to ensure that the scheme would never be built. Vos said both Qatari Diar and CPC Group "were faced with a very difficult position once the Prince of Wales intervened in the planning process in March 2009". He said Qatari Diar executives had to try to "calm the political waters and prevent royal feathers being further ruffled". Qatari Diar was in an impossible position," Vos said. "It could not pretend that the Prince of Wales had not written to its chairman. It could not do nothing. It was, in modern parlance, caught between a rock and a hard place. If it did nothing, it would have risked exacerbating the position with the Prince of Wales, thereby risking that he might take his opposition further by contacting the mayor, the WCC or even the press."
The case has raised serious questions over whether the prince overstepped his constitutional role by becoming involved in a democratic planning process, and today Ruth Reed, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, said Charles's actions had been "an abuse of privileged position" and had "failed to engage with the planning process entirely openly and appropriately". The UK has a democratic and properly constituted planning process: any citizen in this country is able to register their objections to proposed buildings with the appropriate local authority," she said. "The message that this affair sends to overseas investors considering working on UK projects is very concerning."
In his 98-page judgment, Vos said changes were already being negotiated on the scheme through the mayor's office when the prince became involved because Boris Johnson objected to the repetitive design in one area, but not because he objected to its overall modernist premise. "This process was interrupted before it had reached its natural conclusion," he said.
Clarence House declined to comment today. The prince's spokesman, Paddy Harverson, has previously said: "The prince has every right to express an opinion privately, which he does with passion, because he cares." Of course he does, but not about the public good.
Vos said: "I formed the clear view that the intervention of the Prince of Wales was immediately recognised … as raising a serious political issue that needed to be dealt with at the highest level." He also ruled that even after the Qataris had decided to pursue an alternative scheme, the prince's position continued to have an "impact on the views of the officers and politicians (but primarily the latter) at Westminster city council and the Greater London authority".
The judge said what might have been regarded as a relatively simple dispute "appeared at times to be all-out war". Both sides made "overblown" allegations of bad faith. He asked them to try to work together to achieve planning consent, but that seemed a dim prospect. A Qatari Diar statement said "CPC's claims have been a complete waste of time" and that it had lost "a future business relationship with QD as a result of its conduct".
A new design is being drawn up by Dixon Jones, architects of the Royal Opera House, fellow architects Squire & Partners, and Kim Wilkie, a landscape designer who has proposed a market garden, beehives and nut trees. Ben Bolgar, senior design director at the prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, sat on the judging panel and Prince Charles continues to be briefed on the design. Talk about control freak, Charles is a typical Royal, he will make a truly awful monarch. A spoiled brat.
Qatari Diar bought Lizzie's favourite store last year from Mohammed Al-Fayed, Harrods is back in the fold again.
Glad tidings of great joy, the Olympic Village has been sold to the Qatari ruling family's property company in a deal that leaves us £275m out of pocket. Qatari Diar, the oil-rich state's investment arm, and UK property developer Delancey Estates teamed up to buy the athletes' village next to the Olympic Park in east London for £557m. After the games, the village will be converted into a neighbourhood with 2,818 homes, including 1,000 family homeswith three or four bedrooms. The rest of the properties range from studio flats to five-bedroom apartments. The area will also include a school with 1,800 places for children aged three to 19, shops, bars, clinics and parks. The Olympic Delivery Authority, which sold the site, had already sold 1,379 of the residences in the 11 blocks of the athletes' village to Triathlon Homes for £268m in 2009. They will become affordable housing such as shared ownership or socially rented apartments.
At the moment, the apartments in the village do not have kitchens as athletes will eat at dining halls. They will be fitted out for long-term residential use after the games when kitchens will be added and new floors put in. The first tenants are due to move in in late 2013.
Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, hailed the sale as a "fantastic deal that will give taxpayers a great return and shows how we are securing a legacy from London's Games. The village cost £1.1bn to build, but the ODA insisted it never expected to recoup building costs". So that's alright, then. It's "a fantastic deal that will give taxpayers a great return". Like hell it does. The circular running fest will be costing at least £600 million per day - assuming the final bill is £9.3 bn.
The Qatari property developer has been embroiled in a high-profile row over the £3bn Chelsea Barracks scheme, which recently received the green light two years after Prince Charles poked his nose in the public sphere, intervening over plans for the 13-acre site. In June 2009, the developer withdrew its planning application after the Prince of Wales wrote to its chairman, the prime minister of Qatar, saying his "heart sank" when he saw the modernist design by Lord Rogers. Qatari Diar's then-partner, the CPC Group owned by the Monaco-based property developer Christian Candy, launched a high court action to claim £81m in compensation after the scheme's collapse. The architects behind the revised plans are Dixon Jones, Squire and Partners and Kim Wilkie.
"In a historic judgment, Vos found that Qatari Diar, a property development company wholly owned by Qatar's royal family, changed its plans for the prime London site as a result of the prince's direct complaint to the emir that he did not like the designs by the firm of Lord Rogers, a leading modernist architect with whom he has clashed on several occasions. Charles had voiced opposition to the plan for more than 500 homes on the former Ministry of Defence site at a teatime meeting with the emir at Clarence House last spring, and also wrote to the prime minister of Qatar attacking the designs as part of a "gigantic experiment with the very soul of our capital city". He said it should be scrapped in favour of something more "old-fashioned" like the buildings in "Bath or 18th-century Edinburgh".
The judge ruled that by withdrawing the application shortly after his intervention, Qatari Diar breached its contract with co-developer CPC Group, owned by Monaco-based businessman Christian Candy, clearing the way for a claim for costs and damages. However Vos did not support Candy's claim for an early payout of £68.5m, which would have come if planning consent had been granted. He said that Qatari Diar was "caught between a rock and a hard place" as a result of Prince Charles's impassioned demands for an alternative scheme and had been "doing the best it could in difficult circumstances" involving "diplomatic and political implications" to continue the planning process as normal.
The judgment exposed the prince's powerful influence and how he was prepared to go to great lengths to lobby not only fellow royals but also to consider putting pressure on the mayor, Westminister city council and the media to ensure that the scheme would never be built. Vos said both Qatari Diar and CPC Group "were faced with a very difficult position once the Prince of Wales intervened in the planning process in March 2009". He said Qatari Diar executives had to try to "calm the political waters and prevent royal feathers being further ruffled". Qatari Diar was in an impossible position," Vos said. "It could not pretend that the Prince of Wales had not written to its chairman. It could not do nothing. It was, in modern parlance, caught between a rock and a hard place. If it did nothing, it would have risked exacerbating the position with the Prince of Wales, thereby risking that he might take his opposition further by contacting the mayor, the WCC or even the press."
The case has raised serious questions over whether the prince overstepped his constitutional role by becoming involved in a democratic planning process, and today Ruth Reed, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, said Charles's actions had been "an abuse of privileged position" and had "failed to engage with the planning process entirely openly and appropriately". The UK has a democratic and properly constituted planning process: any citizen in this country is able to register their objections to proposed buildings with the appropriate local authority," she said. "The message that this affair sends to overseas investors considering working on UK projects is very concerning."
In his 98-page judgment, Vos said changes were already being negotiated on the scheme through the mayor's office when the prince became involved because Boris Johnson objected to the repetitive design in one area, but not because he objected to its overall modernist premise. "This process was interrupted before it had reached its natural conclusion," he said.
Clarence House declined to comment today. The prince's spokesman, Paddy Harverson, has previously said: "The prince has every right to express an opinion privately, which he does with passion, because he cares." Of course he does, but not about the public good.
Vos said: "I formed the clear view that the intervention of the Prince of Wales was immediately recognised … as raising a serious political issue that needed to be dealt with at the highest level." He also ruled that even after the Qataris had decided to pursue an alternative scheme, the prince's position continued to have an "impact on the views of the officers and politicians (but primarily the latter) at Westminster city council and the Greater London authority".
The judge said what might have been regarded as a relatively simple dispute "appeared at times to be all-out war". Both sides made "overblown" allegations of bad faith. He asked them to try to work together to achieve planning consent, but that seemed a dim prospect. A Qatari Diar statement said "CPC's claims have been a complete waste of time" and that it had lost "a future business relationship with QD as a result of its conduct".
A new design is being drawn up by Dixon Jones, architects of the Royal Opera House, fellow architects Squire & Partners, and Kim Wilkie, a landscape designer who has proposed a market garden, beehives and nut trees. Ben Bolgar, senior design director at the prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, sat on the judging panel and Prince Charles continues to be briefed on the design. Talk about control freak, Charles is a typical Royal, he will make a truly awful monarch. A spoiled brat.
Qatari Diar bought Lizzie's favourite store last year from Mohammed Al-Fayed, Harrods is back in the fold again.