While Britain basks in the glory of an increasing medal haul in Rio de Janeiro, controversy has erupted over plans to hand over part of the parkland left as a legacy of the 2012 London Olympics to four giant cement and concrete factories.
Under the proposals, there would more than 900 movements of heavy goods vehicles a day to and from the Queen Elizabeth Olympic park, the largest urban park to be created in the UK for a century.
The potential dramatic increase in traffic has outraged local residents, who enjoy an Olympic dividend in the shape of a green area larger than Hyde park.
Almost 10,000 people have signed a petition objecting to the plans submitted to the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), the body mandated to act as the planning authority for the Olympic park.
Local councils Tower Hamlets and Newham have raised concerns about increased traffic, noise and the deterioration of air quality.
Hazel Goldman, who has lived in the area for 61 years, wrote on a petition on Change.org: “To allow this development to happen will remind us that, as ever, the world sees fit to dump on the East End of London.”
The vision for the 560-acre site, formerly an industrial area, was to create a residential, cultural and business centre in east London, with the sporting venues coupled with new arrivals such as V&A East and Sadler’s Wells theatre, and two universities.
In 2012, Sebastian Coe, the chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Logoc), said he hoped it would be transformed into a parkland “to ensure generations to come will benefit from a golden summer”.
Publicity for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic park described the takeover by LLDC as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity ... to develop a dynamic new heart for east London”.
However, the LLDC points out that the site, to the south-west of the park, which is close to the Olympic stadium and Pudding Mill Lane DLR station, was always zoned industrial. It is owned by Network Rail and leased to logistics company DB Schenker as an operational rail freight facility.
The LLDC said post-Olympics transformation planning consent specifically required the area to be returned to its use as an operational rail freight facility. “Only development supporting the rail related and small-scale ancillary uses will be supported,” it said.
The corporation pointed out that the use of the area as a warm-up zone for athletes during the 2012 Olympics was only temporary. “The site is safeguarded as strategic industrial land as it is a rail head and that is what it had to return to after its Games-time role had been completed,” a spokesman said.
Several local residents who have submitted written objections acknowledge that the site was historically zoned for industry, but question whether this is appropriate given the number of people who now live in the regenerated area.
“I honestly can’t think of a worse place for a heavy industrial site than the Olympic park. Callous, short-term profiteering, with no regard for the families and people who live nearby having to breath this air, and live next to a blight upon Britain’s international legacy,” Jon Linnell from Leicester wrote on the petition.
Raising an objection, local resident Adam Stork wrote to the LLDC, saying: “Although the site historically has been zoned for industrial use, the majority of local land has now been re-zoned for residential and commercial developments.
“To allow high-level industrial activity nearby will reduce the quality of life for all around it.”
Vivienne Bellamy, in a written submission to the LLDC, said: “This would not be allowed to happen in South Kensington, against which Olympicopolis is already measuring itself.”
In a written submission, Tower Hamlets council said it had broadly accepted the principle of the land use, but said the predicted HGV traffic was “undoubtedly very high” and would have a significant impact on the environment.
In the worst-case scenario, with the plants operating 24 hours a day, the council said there would be “935 HGV movements” in and out of the site daily.
The architect Mark Brearley, a professor of cities at the Cass and previously a design adviser to the former London mayor Boris Johnson, has said he supports the plans. If anyone is at fault, he said, it is the mayor’s office for not coming up with a proper plan for mixed development on the Olympic park.
“On the face of it, it is a good idea to reintroduce these uses for these sites. It it a rail serviced site, has potential water transport [via the river Lea]. There is an environmental challenge, for sure, but if we expel all industry, it defaults to a suburb on steroids with an economy that is only about sports, high-end services and education,” he said.
The LLDC, he said, was to blame for the number of new residents, which was a result of “allowing so many residential developments”.
Brearley said much industry had been taken out of the area, and London had to get its cement and concrete from somewhere. “I think one of the biggest failures is the institution of the mayor, who was in charge of it, is that they failed to come up with a plan,” he said.
A spokesman for the London mayor, Sadiq Kahn, said he had no powers to get involved in decision making.
The plans will be discussed at an LLDC meeting in September, which will be open to the public, and representations can by made to the corporation via the planning website or by email.
