It seems a very long time ago now, but when Manchester City moved to the City of Manchester Stadium, there was great controversy in some quarters. In the wake of the successful Commonwealth Games of 2002, the athletics lobby was furious that the track was ripped up and the venue became a dedicated football stadium. I'd argue that they only had themselves to blame, and that a 60,000 venue with retractable seating could have been considered. But the same athletics lobby's determination not to lose out after 2012 has seen an ill-considered plan adopted for the Olympic Stadium - and it's already too late to put that right, even the most logical outcome ensues and West Ham end up moving in.
Going back to the mid-1990s, the original plan had been to make Wembley Stadium in London the home of British athletics as well as English football, but the football authorities weren't keen and won the day.
The athletics authorities then came up with a plan to build their own stadium elsewhere in London (Picketts Lock, Enfield) and host the 2005 World Athletics Championships there. They eventually gave up on that because it would have had to be funded at least in part by private sector loans and they doubted that the facility would generate sufficient ongoing revenues to cover the repayments.
The Sport England lottery fund is oversubscribed so there are quite strict guidelines for grants, and the potential for community use after the Games would have been the most important factor in determining the level of funding. Picketts Lock was always a pipe dream in that there was no prospect of building the stadium for a price that would be within the scope of grants that they could have realistically have hoped to gain from Sport England supplemented with other grant funding and other resources. The fault for that lies with UK Athletics: they pulled out of hosting the Words in October 2001 when they realised this, but they'd never had a detailed funding plan and it should have been fairly obvious there'd be a shortfall. And project was never going to be commercially viable if it had to rely on commercial funding.
My opinion is that an opportunity was missed with the Manchester Commonwealth Games stadium, which had a 38,000 capacity in 2002 but had the track ripped out and extra seating put in its place afterwards to give a capacity for football of 48,000. Sport England paid £77 million of the £110 million cost of building the stadium. But back in 1999, when Sport England lottery funding decisions were made, there'd been another option for that stadium, which would have been more expensive but for which funding was committed if UK Athletics had agreed. That was to build a stadium with retractable seating which would have a capacity of 60,000 for football and between 45,000 and 50,000 for athletics, and which could have hosted the World Athletics event in 2005.
UK Athletics didn't go for it, and though it was only in March 2000 that they unveiled the Picketts Lock plan, they'd announced an intention to build their own stadium some time before that. They later claimed that they'd never have got the go-ahead to host the Worlds in the UK but outside London, but that, I understand from very good sources, simply wasn't true - and if you look at some of the cities that have hosted the event, it seems unlikely that Manchester would have been refused. They'd never have got the Olympics to the UK but outside London, I fully agree, but that's a different matter entirely. (As an aside, Manchester City would still have taken a tenancy if the capacity had been set at 60,000, I think, but their preference was for 48,000 because the larger figure was simply too big for the club at that time - no one could then have foreseen the advent of ADUG and the remarkable turn of events that would ensue).
Anyway, in my opinion, what didn't happen in Manchester in 2002 should have been the model for the Olympic Stadium in Stratford for 2012. I appreciate the desire not to have a white elephant but given that we're looking at an expenditure on the stadium of £500 million plus, to end up with a facility that, after the games, was deisgned according to a plan to have a 25,000 capacity and a permanent track was an utter waste. Yet construction is largely completed, and it's been built according to that design.
The presence of West Ham in that area of London offers the potential to provide an anchor tenant which would guarantee around 700K visitors a year to the stadium if the East London outfit maintained their current level of attendances, but setting the capacity at 50,000 or so would give the club a real possibility to expand its support base. The stadium could then still have been reconfigured to host major athletics events like World and European championships, national championships and maybe an annual Grand Prix event (or Golden League or whatever they call it now).
Those responsible for the legacy now seem to have come round to that way of thinking, so are inviting bids from people who want to use the stadium after 2012. Not surprisingly, West Ham are up for it. The problem is that, with the stadium built to this design and the athletics track seemingly having to stay come what may, it will be very, very difficult to create a stadium that feels like a proper football stadium, whereas both football and athletics could have been properly accommodated if that had been the original design brief.
As I understand it, the bottom tier is a permanent structure and will hold 25,000. The roof and upper tier have been built to be dismantled after the games. I can't believe that the West Ham owners want a reduced capacity, as far as I know they'd want to build another permanent tier to give a capacity around 50,000. Yet the shape of the stadium means that it'll be impossible to get front row spectators any nearer the pitch even if the athletics track is covered over. Atmosphere will inevitably suffer as a result. City's stadium was designed specifically to be converted for football after hosting athletics. Some fans still complain about the atmosphere,
I'm genuinely interested in this because it's very close to City's situation a decade ago. Moving was very definitely the right thing for us - but then we did get a stadium designed for that purpose. Had we not been getting that, I'd have had grave misgivings. West Ham and a stadium in this location are made for one another: it's 3 miles away from the traditional home, and a lot of the traditional support has moved from the East End anyway and the catchment area now goes all the way into Essex. Stratford is now a major transport hub and being based there will make the club more accessible to fans who have to travel to the games on public transport.
An iconic venue should allow the club to grow and develop - to have a shot at challenging the north London giants and moneyed Chelsea rather than being just another London also ran. And the Hammers are the only institution who could obviously deliver annual spectator numbers to the venue of getting towards the million mark. It is, as they say, a no-brainer.
It should be like that, but it may not, and all because a one-off event at the start of the stadium's lifespan has been allowed to dictate the design for the long term - all because the athletics lobby want a continued athletics use for literally a handful of days each year going forward. To my mind, that's a terrible shame. In this day and age, retractable seating could have ensured that the venue could be used for prestige athletics events without damaging the experience for everyone else whose use of the stadium will actually make it an economic proposition. What a waste!
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