City’s game is to create an Olympus

October 23, 2011|By Risa Wyatt and Peter Schroeder, Globe Correspondents

ETON DORNEY Rowing Centre near Windsor will host over 1,000 shells. (SCOTT HEAVEY/GETTY IMAGES )

“The course of true love never did run smooth,’’ Shakespeare wrote. “Nor the course of planning an Olympics,’’ he might have added.

Ever since 2005, when London was awarded the 2012 Summer Games, the city and its citizens have been gearing up to host a socko event. But in August, the gala five rings were upstaged by images of riots on TVs and computer screens around the world.

But with customary steadfastness and resilience, the British organizers have been keeping their attention fixed on next summer’s competition schedule, July 27 through Aug. 12. The Paralympics follow from Aug. 29 to Sept. 9.

Many Olympics facilities are already completed - under budget and ahead of schedule. That means visitors can preview the venues not just in London but also in Weymouth (sailing) and Eton Dorney (rowing).

LONDON’S CALLING

The only city to hold the Games three times, London hosted the Olympics in 1908 (events included tug of war) and 1948 (competitors brought their own towels since Britain was under postwar austerity).

While the royal wedding in April symbolized heritage - something old - the Olympics represent something new - the redevelopment of the city’s East End. Formerly a derelict district of wharves and warehouses, the area is the site for the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium, nine other sports venues, and the main Olympic Village. The area was unaffected during the recent unrest.

For 400 years, the East End welcomed waves of refugees: from 16th-century French Huguenots to 19th-century Eastern European Jews to today’s Bangladeshis. The district also served as home turf for George Bernard Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle (Cockneys traditionally are born within earshot of St. Mary-le-Bow’s church bells) and for Jack the Ripper (his murderous spree centered around Whitechapel).

In the 1970s, tourists rarely ventured farther east than the Tower of London. However, a geographic shift eastward started in the 1980s with redevelopment of Canary Wharf, once among the busiest docks in the world. It has morphed into a global financial center employing 100,000 people.

Then artists moved into the East End because of the low rents, and gentrification followed. Galleries and boutiques sprang up in Spitalfields, Shoreditch, and along Redchurch Street.

FROM BROWN TO GREEN

However, the adjacent industrial area around Stratford stagnated. When London won the Olympics bid, this district became the chief target for revitalization - and one of the largest urban regeneration projects in the world. Six hundred acres were bulldozed. After centuries of industry, the site was so polluted that authorities established a “soil hospital’’ to cleanse contaminants.