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Olympic Stadium Shambles On
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Leyton Orient soccer club, which lost out to London rival West Ham United in a bid to become the preferred tenant, is claiming the whole process was fundamentally flawed.
The London Legacy Development Corporation, which is charged with ensuring the Olympic Park doesn’t become a white elephant, says Orient’s latest legal challenge is “disappointing” and “misconceived.”
Orient, along Tottenham Hotspur soccer club, had challenged the first round of bidding, which also went to West Ham.
In October 2011 the bidding process was scrapped amid fears that the soccer clubs’ combined legal actions could drag on for years, leaving the LLDC with little chance of achieving its goal of having a tenant in place in 2015.
That ambition has already taken a knock as the LLDC and The Hammers haggle over who is going to pick up the tab for the £160 million cost of re-configuring a venue that’s already cost £486 million to build.
The roof needs to be modified to cover all the seated areas, retractable seating is needed on the athletics track and the hospitality areas need improving.
“We believe the rules of the bidding process set out by the LLDC have not been followed,” Orient chairman Barry Hearn told BBC London. “We are challenging them by asking the High Court to issue a judicial review.”
Hearn argues that the current process carried out by the LLDC has ignored the possibility of Orient and West Ham sharing the stadium.
The Orient chairman proposed a possible ground share with the Premier League side when the bidding process reopened last summer, but thereafter West Ham announced it was not considering such an arrangement.
“All parties signed up to the principle of ‘teaming’ and we don’t think that serious consideration has been given to Leyton Orient sharing or ‘teaming’ with West Ham in the occupancy of the Olympic Stadium,” Hearn explained. “Our legal advice is that there is a fundamental flaw in the LLDC’s bidding process that has to be rectified.”