The north section of the Olympic Park – how long before we get used to calling it the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park? – will open 27 July 2013, but we could be waiting three years after that to get back into the Olympic Stadium.
At a City Hall meeting yesterday, the head of the London Legacy Development Corporation confirmed that the very earliest the Stadium would open to the public would be August 2015, and if West Ham win the bid (and we've been there before) it would be August 2016. The winning bidder was meant to take over by 2014, but apparently the amount of paperwork involved has pushed everything back by around a year.
There are four options on the table: two football clubs (West Ham and Leyton Orient), Intelligent Transport Services (the company behind the F1 circuit idea) and UCFB College of Football Business. There's also talk of the stadium hosting Rugby World Cup matches in September/October 2015, but presumably a West Ham win would scupper that. Rumours of the NFL getting involved remain just that.
Photo by World of Tim 2 from the Londonist Flickr pool
