Seven years ago today, just up the road from where I'm writing this, London's Olympic Games began with that unforgettable Opening Ceremony. It's still online, all four hours of it, should you wish to take time out to remember the inclusive country we used to be.
A seventh anniversary isn't normally one to celebrate, but it was in July 2005 that the IOC confirmed the 2012 Games were being awarded to London, which means July 2019 is as far after the Games as the announcement was before.
Since 2012 the stadium's become a controversial home for West Ham United, the Aquatics Centre is Newham's best municipal pool and the Velodrome occasionally echoes to competitive pedals. White elephant status has been avoided through careful planning, and hundreds of people still throng across the landscaped site on a daily basis. But the most important thing about the post-Olympic Park is that it still isn't finished, so I've been out to look at what's changed over the last twelve months and what's (still) yet to come.
Western edge
• Here East continues to attract e-start-up-folk, but has lost at least one of its canalside bar/restaurants over the last year. You can also now hire an electric scooter and ride it down to almost-Westfield, thanks to QEOP being a private rather than a public space.
• East Wick, one of the Park's new residential neighbourhoods, is finally underway between Here East and the Copper Box and already looks like the usual cluster of stacked flats. Building works and road diversions are ongoing. Nobody has yet started on the much larger redevelopment across the grass to the east of Waterden Road.
• Clarnico Quay, between the Copper Box and the Lea, will be a temporary independent business centre and then flats, but for now is a scrappy mess.
• With every passing month Hackney Wick creeps from edgy creative neighbourhood to bland residential silo. Demolition continues down Wallis Road in a non-uplifting manner. In the meantime, the Hackney Wicked Open Studios festival returns this weekend, and should be cracking.
• Barge East, a Dutch sailing barge kitted out as a bar/kitchen, has proved so popular it's encroached onto Canal Park with a dozen outside tables (until 10pm only) and added a silver Airstream beside the BBQ drum.
• This very morning the towpath beneath Bridge H14 is being closed off so the footbridge can be removed and replaced by something which takes buses and cars. The new bridge has already been dropped off close by and is waiting to be winched into place.
• Bridge H16 opened as a replacement for Bridge H14 back in May, but the steps down to the towpath remain sealed off and the thin layer of turf draped ineffectively behind the bench seating has curled up in the heat.
• The owner of Forman's salmon smokery is now one of London's Brexit Party MEPs, and reckons Boris Johnson's new cabinet "is superb in every respect."
• Forman's former car park is rising again as 200 flats to be branded as Lock No 19. They will not enhance the waterside.
• The hut alongside Old Ford Lock, most recently the preserve of Anglers Who Looked Like They Were Also Cabbies, has become a Canal and Rivers Trust outpost. When I tried walking past yesterday one of their t-shirted representatives stopped chatting to his colleagues, stepped up to a table of collateral and tried to engage me in conversation about their good works. I do not give money to organisations which squander funding on canalside chuggers.
• If someone would repave the connection between the Lea towpath and the Greenway so it isn't a puddle for 11 months of the year, that would be excellent.
Southern Park
• Construction of Sweetwater, one of the Park's new residential neighbourhoods, is almost underway between the stadium and the Energy Centre.
• Carpenters Road is sealed off for most of its length so that construction can begin (indeed has begun) on the East Bank cultural cluster. The first buildings will open in 2022, including a Sadler’s Wells theatre, the rest in 2023, including a V&A museum.
• Bus route 339 has been diverted away from Carpenters Road around the stadium since last Christmas, and future plans propose diverting it again across Bridge H14 once that's ready.
• A lot of Stadium Island is sealed off because it's the summer events season. It doesn't look like anyone has any interest in opening the southern end of the City Mill River towpath.
• The View Tube cafe has reopened under its third set of management, with a less ambitious menu and no great prospect of economic success.
• Bobby Moore Academy (Secondary) completed its first academic year on Wednesday.
• The lawn to the south of the Orbit has been fenced off and is just starting transformation into a UCL London campus, because six years of greenery is no guarantee of future leisurespace. The scrappy wasteland just south of the Aquatics Centre will be next. Both projects fall under the East Bank umbrella, despite not being waterside.
• If you remember how fantastic the wildflowers were during the Games, they're still good, but absolutely nowhere near as good.
• As recently blogged, the Greenway between the railway and Stratford High Street has reopened after 10 years, sheesh 10 years. It may never be possible to follow the City Mill River out of the Park.
• Pudding Mill's empty tarmac spaces still aren't a residential neighbourhood, nor even yet a building site. The Marshgate Lane Trading Estate has recently been levelled, so looks like joining them in inactivity.
Northern Park
• The road junction where Waterden Road meets Clarnico Road, home to what may be London's most lethargic pedestrian crossing, is being massively reengineered to connect to a new link road which is almost complete, The new tarmac carriageway is an admission that the original legacy road network was inefficient, and a lot more flats can be crammed in by redrawing the underlying canvas.
• Chobham Manor neighbourhood continues to extend, street by street, creating a peculiar postmodern neighbourhood of geometric flats, narrow townhouses and identikit street trees.
• This is not, currently, the most change-focused end of the Park. By 2026, expect unrecognisable bits.
