Anger grows over Olympic proposal for Fish Island
The Fish Island Olympic proposal includes a giant sofa and TV screen. Photograph: H.Forman & Son
Plans for Olympic corporate guests to enjoy hospitality from a gigantic sofa while watching the UK’s biggest TV have enraged homeowners who live just metres away.
Outline planning permission has been granted for a temporary venue capable of hosting up to 8,000 visitors a day on Fish Island, a small former industrial area in Stratford which is home to 600 people and 120 businesses.
The scheme has been devised by Lance Forman, a former accountant and owner of a smoked salmon factory which relocated to Fish Island following the decision to construct the Olympic Park on its former premises. Although Forman is already running a restaurant and event venue next to his factory, he plans to use an empty 20,000 square metre space adjacent to the factory to create an “experiential, hospitality and entertainment” venue with a press and media centre and TV studios above.
The venue, which will open from 8am to 2am the following morning from April to September 2012, will take the form of a giant living room. Forman said it would be an “iconic” image of the Olympics that could help “put Fish Island on the map and help the area regenerate post-Games”.
The temporary structure could be packed up after the Games and reused. “The living room floor is 6m off the ground and underneath you have 5,500 metres of hospitality space,” Forman said. “The sofa itself is the equivalent of a four-storey building with hospitality space. The cabinet that the giant TV sits on could become a nightclub for 1,000 people or 1,500 people.”
Forman envisages the planned screen, which will measure 30 metres by 17 metres, being used for live action as well as video games and to display Twitter feeds.
But he said the plans were far from being final: “The planning permission we have is for a concept scheme. The details have not been worked out yet and we don’t know what the final design will be, at this stage. Our vision is to build something creative and iconic.”
However, objectors to the scheme believe the development will bring gridlock to the roads and constant disturbance, pointing out that Forman’s Living Room will be the second hospitality venue located on the island. Permission has already been granted for another scheme hosting 4,000 people a day.
Objections lodged
Fish Island comprises a few narrow lanes enclosed by the A12 and the river Lea navigation (a canalised river). The island can only be accessed by one road, and planning officers for the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation, which this week granted the initial go ahead for the scheme, warned that access to the site is poor by all means of transportation, both public and private.
One protestor at a planning meeting described the decision as madness and “a disaster waiting to happen: 12,500 people on a tiny little island”.
Michael Roberts, who owns a scrap metal yard on the island, said access to his yards will be blocked by the shuttlebus, coach and pre-booked taxi points, part of which are planned to run along a length of road where parking is not normally allowed.
Frank and Pam Henson, who with their daughter live directly opposite the Forman’s site in Lock Keepers’ Cottage, former location for Channel 4 programme The Big Breakfast, have already lived through construction of the Olympic stadium “virtually in our back garden without unduly disturbing us”.
But the noise generated by an event staged recently on Forman’s site leaves them in fear of the planned development: “Only a month ago [Forman] rented out his open yard to Coca Cola for an advertising shoot involving 1,000 extras, plus cast, with a sound system so loud it caused nausea and set off car alarms in nearby Dace Road,” Henson said.
“The key thing is that this seems to be an open venue from the indicative drawings. Music sound can be reduced with limiters, but thousands of revellers’ voices cannot.”
The local authority, Tower Hamlets, objected to the proposal, expressing concern at the potential impact on residents and the capacity of the surrounding transport networks to cope with the proposed numbers.
Forman said his initiative was only opposed by a small number of nearby residents and that any inconvenience would be outweighed by benefits for the area. “There is very much a feeling among local people that east London really hasn’t benefited from the Olympics. It would be a real brownie point if a sponsor came and did something for local people,” he said.
“We have to meet all the noise regulations and environmental regulations to get a licence. There was a misunderstanding among some of the residents that we were building a nightclub for 8,000 people. That’s not what we’re doing, we’re building a corporate hospitality facility for that number of people throughout the day. It sounds a lot, but spread through the entire day and in the context of 500,000 coming to the area for the Games [it’s not].”
Final details of the scheme will be subject to further planning meetings, but Forman insisted there was time to build the ambitious structure. “We’ve been advised it will take four months. The main issue with the timing is that there is a certain amount of kit around to build these structures and if we don’t book it, it will have to be fabricated and that adds to the timeline and the cost.”
He added: “At an event for Olympic sponsors, addressed by Lord Mawson, he talked about how they should be encouraged to put more into this area now, during and post-Games to help the legacy of the Olympics and the regeneration of east London, so that east Londoners don’t just see them coming in for the two-week party and disappearing.
“This is what all this is about – building a lasting legacy for the area.”
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