Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park London: exciting new East Bank district to bring hundreds of new flats, schools and the BBC to Stratford

Five years on from opening to the public, the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford is delivering on the promise of a Games’ legacy in gold-medal style.

If you are looking for a new home to rent or buy, a job, or to start a business, now is possibly the best time — despite Brexit jitters — considering what the park could become in just a few years’ time.

The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games cost £9 billion and put east London on the global map. The event produced the largest new piece of green space in the capital for more than 100 years.

Twenty-eight million people have visited the park since 2014. Of those, half are local and half from every corner of the world, according to the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC).

An armada of cultural and commercial enterprises arriving soon will turbo-charge the park’s progress. With 33,000 homes planned and 40,000 jobs in prospect, the transformation of the Lower Lea Valley is shifting London eastward.

“I think of it as the ‘Bloomsbury effect’,” says Dr Paul Brickell, LLDC director of regeneration. He is referring to the mixture of business, creative and cultural activities bubbling up in the park that will blossom with the arrival in 2023 of East Bank, a £1.1 billion waterside cultural quarter sandwiched between the Olympic stadium, West Ham United’s new home and Westfield Stratford City.

“Bloomsbury has a mix of cultural, scientific and education institutions, green spaces, beautiful homes and businesses. That’s the kind of mix we are creating,” says East Ender Brickell, a molecular biologist and former Newham councillor.

London College of Fashion, University College London, the BBC, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, the V&A and the American Smithsonian Institution are all building outposts at East Bank.

Four primary and secondary schools have also been built on the park’s edges to help to integrate local communities, while the Here East hub for digital, creative and media businesses is rapidly filling up.

The LLDC realised that the park’s attraction for businesses and institutions could help to drive regeneration on brownfield sites outside the park, so it switched its original intention to build homes on sites such as East Bank to cultural and business uses.

This has helped to generate a “ripple effect” around the park, judging by the residential-led schemes that developers are proposing.

The Mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz, said: “Westfield Stratford City and the businesses coming to Newham have provided opportunities for thousands of jobs. But we have to make sure more of these are accessible to local people and that housing is genuinely affordable. That’s the legacy local people are looking for. I’ll be advancing that agenda as we approach the Games’s 10-year anniversary in 2022.”

East Village for renters: Get Living, the manager of the 67-acre East Village, has just launched 482 rental apartments at Victory Plaza overlooking Victory Park, and construction has started on a further 524-home phase.

These are the first new homes since the Olympics, ranging from studios to four-bedroom apartments, with five roof gardens and new shops.

Triathlon Homes manages 1,379 homes for social and intermediate rent and shared equity/shared ownership. All of the latter have been sold, with some being offered for resale on the open market.

There are no landlord deposits and rents include the service charge. Three-year tenancies and a “resident-only” break clause after six months are standard.

Prices for one-bedroom homes from £1,600 a month; two-bedroom from £1,900 a month; three-bedroom from £2,550 a month; four-bedroom townhouses from £3,250 a month.

Chobham Manor for sale: a joint venture development by Taylor Wimpey with housing assocation L&Q, Chobham Manor’s homes range from one-bedroom apartments to large “multi-generational” homes arranged around three shared greens in terraced streets with townhouses and maisonettes, mews and larger apartment blocks.

With 300 homes completed, and 859 to come, of which 189 are affordable, they are available through L&Q. Prices for three-bedroom apartments are from £690,000; four-bedroom townhouses are £860,000. One-bedroom flats were available from £460,000 and two-bedroom from £590,000. Prices for studios and smaller apartments in forthcoming phases are yet to be confirmed.

‘We’re living the dream’

Tech entrepreneur Hannah Sutcliffe, her boyfriend Dani and their friend Vinh share a two-bedroom flat in East Village.

They co-founded tech start-up Moonhub, based in the Plexal innovation centre in Here East, a 15-minute walk across the park. “We create virtual-reality training platforms. We’re working in healthcare and retail,” says Hannah.

“I love the community feel of East Village and the supper club and Knit and Natter club that Get Living organises. You meet the whole community and you could easily go on your own and make friends. Last summer was incredible, with a huge TV screen set up on Victory Park.”

“We pay £1,900, or £650 a month each, for our two-bedroom apartment. We had to be in London, but we don’t feel as though we’re in the city centre and we don’t have a Tube commute. We’re living the dream.”

‘We engage in more community activities’

Architectural photographer Frank Da Silva was one of Get Livings’ first residents. “My partner Gianne and I have been here for five years,” says Frank. “It’s been a bit of an adventure.

“I lead local photo walks around the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and Gianne has run a pop-up kitchen at one of the neighbourhood bars, Tina We Salute You.

“I’ve been documenting the park, and the legacy transformation is really impressive. We rent a two-bedroom flat for £1,900 a month. Our previous one-bedroom place in Shepherd’s Bush was the same price.

Our lifestyle has changed dramatically. We’re more sporty because we use the park’s facilities, and we engage in more community activities.”

‘There’s no need for us to have a car here’

Olympic Park fan Miguel Garcia, a digital entrepreneur, says: “Since moving from the US in 2010, my wife and I had gone from one rental to another with terrible landlords, so the service from Get Living was important. We have a two-year-old and we’re expecting a baby.

“I’m a solo entrepreneur and my company Fylo Learning applies my experience of working at LinkedIn to education. We offer employability and digital-skill workshops to the local community and I work across London.

“All the essentials are here — dentist, surgery, shops, restaurants, transport — and we don’t need a car. Since we arrived, what’s really changed is the construction. A lot of people will be moving here, but the business opportunities are going to get more exciting with the arrival of East Bank.”