What will happen to Athletes Village?

What Stuart Corbyn is attempting is not revolutionary and certainly not an "experiment", a suggestion he instantly rejects. In fact, he's insistent it's a return to business as usual in the property market, especially in London.

To observers who have grown up on property prices, mortgage spirals, nest-eggs and the cult of ownership, it may appear as verging on contrary.

Stuart Corbyn is the managing director of QDD, a partnership of Qatari Diar Real Estate Company and Delancey and, shortly after the Olympic Games, he will take control of the Athletes Village.

After a refit and a rebrand - to the East Village with its iconic E20 postcode - his company will begin to rent out apartments. Not sell. Rent. In the European mode - rental as a long-term, high quality deliberate option. Ownership of the community, ownership of a stake in the future but not ownership of the bricks and mortar.

He says people are ready for the change in mind-set and the joint venture he heads up is simply meeting pent-up demand in the market.

He told The Wharf: "If we were doing this 20 years ago it might have been a problem because the rental market was at such a low level but people have got very used to the concept now, particularly in London.

"Twenty-odd years ago it was impossible to rent - the private sector was very limited but people have moved on.

"It is not such an oddity. The oddity is the UK having such a low level of rental housing compared to the rest of the world. People get very hung up about it but it's very normal."

Not an experiment then, as suggested by architecture critic Jay Merrick during a session at Grand Designs Live at Excel recently.

"We don't normally experiment with the best part of half a billion pounds," responded Mr Corbyn, any bristling submerged beneath an effortless charm honed over years in the world of high end property.

He was chief executive of Cadogan Estates for 23 years until 2008 and was responsible for the resurgence of the Sloane area with its premium retail.

Jay also tackled a few points about the architectural gaucheness of "Elgin marble friezes" and "brick cassettes" but that's what architecture critics were vexed by and nothing to do with QDD, said Mr Corbyn. If fellow panellist Jonathan Kendall of architects Fletcher Priest bristled he did so covertly.

Mr Corbyn went on: "There is a very important point here and that is the assumption this is something new.

"Forty years ago a very substantial part of greater London was rental. The rental market before the first world war was 90 per cent and rental has been in gradual decline because of the amount of legislation - rental controls, security of tenure.

"We were at the bottom but since new legislation came in the amount of private rented sector has grown. What we're doing is making a choice available for people. An alternative.

"Our ambition is to give people an opportunity to rent for the long term. The idea is that people should be just as comfortable renting as they are owning their homes."

Comfortable. It's a baton of a word picked up and carried by Eliot Lipton. A tall, affable man, Mr Lipton is heading Triathlon's affordable housing half of East Village, a project that has its own high ideals, co-mingling private and social housing to create a cohesive community.

He set up First Base, an urban regeneration developer specialising in sustainable, high quality and affordable homes. First Base has linked with East Thames and Southern to be the triumvirate that is Triathlon.

Mr Lipton said: "What the design team have done here is very reflective of London as a whole. We want people to feel comfortable - they recognise it as distinct but they recognise it as part of London that they love, something they are familiar with. We have tried to create a place where people will want to live."

After the seminar he expanded on the theme to The Wharf.

He said: "QDD and Triathlon have been working to ensure that we have a community that works from Day One.

"We want residents to move in very early on from next year to feel at home straight away and we have a programme of activities that make them feel that way because we recognise an important part of finding a new home is the management and some of those community facilities."

Community and neighbourhood. Words that are peppered into the message from the two figureheads of East Village, the first of five estates that will take over the vast Olympic Park during the course of the next 20 years.

To take a trip in the East Village pod at Grand Design Live (as TV guru Kevin McCloud did) was to cycle - albeit virtually - through pathways lined with colourful summer flowers, alongside canals, through communal areas where families trip to and fro from shop, to grass, to sporting venue, to Westfield and back again.

Those connections to the traditional centres are vital. Across to the West End and City in minutes or back to "old" Stratford from where many of the new tenants will come.

I ask the question that is often asked of Canary Wharf: "East Village - friend or foe?"
Mr Lipton said: "Firstly, the scheme was designed so that it is part of the community it has a lot of bridges and connections whether they're into Newham or into Hackney. Accessibility and integration have been critical.

"Secondly, a very high proportion of Triathlon Homes will be reserved for the residents of Newham. So I hope we will make a positive contribution."

Mr Corbyn said: "As far as we are concerned, we will open our doors to anybody who wants to live there but it's not unnatural for people to stick to an area they know rather than move from the west."

The lessons have been learnt, so they say, of Canary Wharf which is still dogged by the reality and symbolism of an island.

Architect Jonathan Kendall, who has been working on the Stratford City project for a decade and whose work was subsumed into the Olympic circus, recalls a strict message from Newham Borough Council.

He said: "One of the interesting directions we had from Newham was not to be Canary Wharf.

"This place needed to have a different relationship to its surroundings. Hopefully, over time it will become something that is embedded in the community."

Pictured: From left, Stuart Corbyn of partnership QDD, Eliot Lipton, of Triathlon, and Jonathan Kendall, director of architect Fletcher Priest

FACTFILE

■ East Village will be run by QDD (a joint venture between Qatari Diar Real Estate Company and Delancey) and Triathlon Homes (a joint venture between First Base, East Thames Group and Southern Housing Group).

■ The new neighbourhood will initially deliver 2,818 new homes - of which 1,439 will be private and mainly available for rent, while the remaining 1,379 will be affordable offering the choice of buying or renting.

■ A range of properties will be available - from one-bedroom apartments to three and four-bed family homes.

■ QDD will create the first ever private sector residential investment fund of more than 1,000 homes.

■ For the affordable homes, 675 will be available as social rent and there is a lettings strategy covering how these will be allocated. An additional 700 homes will be for intermediate market rent and shared ownership.

■ Approximately half of the homes will be for people in the borough of Newham, although some will also be available for people in other host boroughs.

■ Facilities include: Chobham Academy which will offer 1,800 places for students aged three-19; a state-of-the-art medical centre; world class sporting and leisure facilities; 30 shops, cafes and restaurants, and access to the venues of the Olympic Park.
Go to eastvillagelondon.co.uk

© First published in The Wharf, May 2012

What's going to happen to the Olympic Park?

It's pouring down. We're sheltering in a food and drink concession in the shadow of the Orbit. The canvas roof is pounding with rain that puddles at our feet.

Tricky climate then for Andrew Altman to paint a picture of what's to come. Still, he gives it a go.

The chief executive of the London Legacy Development Corporation (a "government in exile") says: "You can imagine people will be able to sit out on the lawn, look at the Orbit, look at the stadium.

"There's going to be a permanent cafe, shop, a restaurant, you'll be able to sit out on the roof but in a public space. You think about the Serpentine gallery - we should want that in east London.

"In these landscaped rooms that we're going to create, each one is going to be very different - some will have an amphitheatre where there will be small concerts, some will be a kids' play area, one will be a splash pool. We want it to be fun for families."

But that's looking ahead to Easter 2014 when the retro-fitting has been complete, the temporary Olympic venues removed, the park transformed and transferred.

What he's keen to share with us is this: He and his team have taken a decision to set a tough deadline of a year after Games, July 2013, to begin re-opening the park in phases, North Park first.

He says: "Our programme is to get it open as quickly as we can, get it open from North to South, get it open from a year after the Games, from July 2013 till Easter 2014, phased re-opening, get people in the park so they can enjoy it.

"The easy decision would be to say you'll open the park in 2014, give yourself a lot of time, reopen the whole thing, when you've worked everything out but that's not really right.

"People are anxious to get on the park. We want to keep that memory, that excitement alive."

He doesn't want the park to slip from people's minds, become a thing over there to which they're not invited.

"You're not going to have the density of people to use the park right away, to make it active and feel alive. So we're going to have to do a lot to get people in here and feel like it's their park."

London Assembly member John Biggs agrees with the concern, if not the length of the entire project.

He said: "I understand they've got to take down a few bridges and structures but there's a risk the Olympic buzz will have faded away in two years' time. These engineers serve us and people should have a chance to enjoy the park. If the Olympics are to have a legacy, people need access to the park."

If Andrew Altman worries about anything, it is this. He said: "The first years of the park are key. If it's just a passive park, fine, it's nice, but it won't work.

"We've got to get people into this park. Truthfully, it's going to be through giving people stuff to do.

"We'll open up the North Park a year after Games, have people come out, have London's greatest picnic which will happen over that summer.

"The North Park is like a river valley. Quiet, beautifully landscaped, a place where people can sit out, have a picnic, kick a ball about."

If it's not raining.