Olympic Stadium; our day in court

Stu_of_Kunming said:

redman said:

ross1 said:

According to the Mayor of London, London taxpayers will have to pay £2.5m if West Ham relegated

I don't understand this comment by SK. Are West Ham currently paying £5m pa rent at the moment or am I missing something else. 

Less, I'm pretty sure, but @PragueAddick will know for sure.

Actually it is pretty close. Stu will be thinking of the starting level rent which was just £2m'ish, but gradually after a lot of pressure it has been squeezed up to £4.6m p.a. Credit for that goes to Lyn Garner who succeeded David Goldstone,  who was CEO of the LLDC at the time the original deal was done. She was appointed by Sadiq Khan and by that time the Moore Stephens inquiry which laid bare the fiasco of the deal had been published. Goldstone was a weasel who tried to discredit both the BBC documentary, and Steve Clarke and I by suggesting we had "secretly" submitted a different FOI request which demanded sight of the stadium plans. I mean, the whole point of FOI is to make things un-secret, and why would we need the stadium plans? Dan Roan at the BBC, himself put under pressure by Goldstone, tipped me off about that and I have fondly preserved the written apology I wrung from Goldstone. 

Lyn Garner had the business brain and the cojones to face down Brady and make them pay more. That was no easy task because the LLDC had very little leverage. Trouble is it still did not and does not cover the annual expenses incurred by West Ham's tenancy, still less ongoing maintenance and renovation costs. One of the clauses which was retained was the relegation clause which stipulates a 50% reduction in rent. That more or less covers SK's £2.5m assertion, and is the main reason for it.

The Athletic has a more than decent summary of the situation here, which hopefully is not paywalled. (though I am certain that the refit cost is £323m and not £272m as they say, I know where the difference comes from but would need time to dig it out) Another thing I didn't know about, mentioned elsewhere, is that they are trying to persuade West Ham to co -operate so that London can hold the 2029 World Athletics Championship, which take place in September that year. The unintentional LOL headline of the article is "West Ham urged to show ‘heart and soul’ over London 2029 World Athletics bid". That's how much leverage we have. Well Brady's gone, but you can take it from me Daniel Kretinsky is not well known in Prague for his "heart and soul" either🤣